Is this country still under the rule of law? Decreasingly so, even for American citizens. Watch this short discussion about Jose Padilla (on Shepard Smith's show) and you'll see shameful conduct and policies Barack Obama has in common with George W. Bush: The fact that thePatriot Act will be extended is equally incredible. We're trying really hard to keep up with China on violation of basic human rights.
This is a completely personal anecdote, so take it for what it's worth. This is about a defining moment for me in my education as an egalitarian. Equality is something we talk about, we assume to be the case for everyone, and never really question. Here, it's the air we breathe. It's not true. We are not all equal. And in spite of our all our lip service to the idea of equality under the law or the equality of opportunity, we all know, if we're honest, that we're still trying to get to that level. Probably it's a function of how well we think our lives are at any given moment. "If I'm doing all right, there's no problem. What are those people over there complaining about? I don't see anything wrong with my life." Well. This is about gender equality. It's one of the most under-considered things in our present world. I saw a PBS special last week about early television and on it Angie Dickinson was talking about her series Police Woman. Breakthrough television. It had been the first dramatic tv show since the mid-60s to be headed by a female in prime time. It was shortly before Charlie's Angels and a decade after both Honey West and The Girl From U.N.C.L.E. During the interview, Dickinson commented that the feminists had been angry with her because she hadn't used the show as a statement for the cause. She defended herself by declaring that she was feminine not a feminist---as if being a feminist were somehow a bad thing, a dirty word, a slur. [More . . . ]
The last really good history I read was "Hellhound On His Trail, " which follows James Earl Ray's path from his childhood in Alton, Illinois through a violent intersection with the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and continues to follow Ray's trajectory with his quizzical recantations of his "life's purpose." With the same cool hand, Sides sketches the strengths and inadequacies of Dr. King's inner circle and paints larger atmospheric strokes with newspaper headlines on the increasing violence in response to desegregation and the influence of war in Vietnam on national sentiment about federal involvement in heretofore state affairs. By themselves, vignettes about Ray's lackluster career as a petty criminal, his stunted attempts at artistic grandeur and addiction to prostitutes would simply depress the reader. Here, the intentional failures and manipulations of Hoover's FBI and first-hand accounts of Ray's behavior appear like birds descending on a tragic town, flickering across the broader canvas creating momentum and dread. Awful as the true subject of this thriller may be, I found myself disappointed to reach the end.
You don't see many of these Guantanamo exit interviews in the American media. This particular story about a man named Saad Iqbal Madni was published by a website called The World Can't Wait. The way he was treated by American officials is despicable. We desperately need to make sure that the story of American torture at Guantanamo, and elsewhere is fully told, and that it never happens again. If you are a United States Citizen, this activity was done in your name.
Glenn Greenwald has written about the federal government's common practice of seizing laptops and smartphones of American citizens who are re-entering the United States and reviewing their private data. Amazingly, our government is seizing this personal data without probable cause and even without reasonable suspicion:
When you really think about it, it's simply inconceivable that the U.S. Government gets away with doing this. Seizing someone's laptop, digging through it, recording it all, storing the data somewhere, and then distributing it to various agencies is about the most invasive, privacy-destroying measure imaginable. A laptop and its equivalents reveal whom you talk to, what you say, what you read, what you write, what you view, what you think, and virtually everything else about your life. It can -- and often does -- contain not only the most private and intimate information about you, but also information which the government is legally barred from accessing (attorney/client or clergy/penitent communications, private medical and psychiatric information and the like). But these border seizures result in all of that being limitlessly invaded. This is infinitely more invasive than the TSA patdowns that caused so much controversy just two months ago.But how often are these e-strip searches occurring?
[T]his is happening to far more than people associated with WikiLeaks. As a result of writing about this, I've spoken with several writers, filmmakers, and activists who are critics of the government and who have been subjected to similar seizures -- some every time they re-enter the country.But this is the tip of the iceberg:
A FOIA request from the ACLU revealed that in the 18-month period beginning October 1, 2008, more than 6,600 people -- roughly half of whom are American citizens -- were subjected to electronic device searches at the border by DHS, all without a search warrant.I highly recommend reading Greenwald's detailed article for the reaction to this practice by a smattering of members of Congress and by a few court decisions. The sad bottom line is that there is no political momentum to condemn and bar this practice, even in the context of ubiquitous rhetoric regarding the need to limit the power of the federal government.