The tapes from Gates-gate are out (Transcripts here.) The 911 call makes Lucia Whalen, the person who called in, look good - she says she does not know what is going on. Does not mention "black men." In fact she said that they looked "kind of hispanic." The 911 dispatcher seems brusque.

The dispatch is pretty fuzzy too. Then Crowley seems to answer. Then a call in that "the gentleman says he resides here but it uncooperative." Then a call in to Harvard police. Then Gates is mentioned by name. Clearly he gave his name and identification to Crowley.

Then a call for "the wagon" to the location. This certainly is not helpful to Crowley's account. Update - for those who argue that Crowley's assertion in his police report that he spoke to Whalen at the scene may explain his reference to "two black men with backpacks" is belied by the fact that Whalen's attorney said "[Whalen n]ever once in any of her statements, conversations, and so forth did she ever use the word black. . . . But more importantly, when Sergeant Crowley got there, she didn’t have a conversation with him at all."

Speaking for me only

Comments closed.

The [warrantless surveillance] program was lawful . . . The reflexive judgments to the contrary seem hasty at best. There has been much controversy about the lawfulness of the program. Here I must point out that agency lawyers — career attorneys with deep expertise in the law, privacy and intelligence — assisted their professional Justice Department counterparts in their review of the program but remained comfortable throughout with the lawfulness of all aspects of the surveillance effort.- Michael Hayden

What amazes me about Michael Hayden, the former Bush Administration CIA and NSA Director, is not that he defends his and the Bush Administration actions. You would expect that. But that he does it so poorly does seem strange.

To cite the legal judgments of lawyers who approved torture - people like John Yoo, David Addington and John Rizzo, defies belief. But there you have it. I quoted from his Hayden's latest op-ed and it remains the same style of argument - trust my word. Now this argument worked to convince Joe Klein and the Media for years. A lot of us knew better. and have been proven right. But Hayden lives in a time warp, where nothing regarding the abuses of the Bush Administration lawyers has been revealed. A world where Joe Klein was proven a fool. We're past that now I hope.

Speaking for me only

A report by the Immigration Justice Law Clinic at Benjamin Cardozo law school has found, based on a review of 700 arrest reports, that immigration agents broke the law and the constitution in conducting immigration raids.

Armed federal immigration agents have illegally pushed and shoved their way into homes in New York and New Jersey in hundreds of predawn raids that violated their own agency rules as well as the Constitution, according to a study to be released on Wednesday by the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law.

...The raids were supposed to focus on dangerous criminals, but overwhelmingly netted Latinos with civil immigration violations who happened to be present, the study said. Raiders mistakenly held legal residents and citizens by force in their own homes while agents rummaged through drawers seeking incriminating documents, the report said.

[More...]

For several months, a police supervisor in Portsmouth, New Hampshire used a bugging device to listen to civilian employees in the police records office as they conversed with each other and with visitors. The device was apparently installed to help supervisors investigate complaints about the employees' rudeness when interacting with the public. Although a sign in the police department warns visitors that their conversations in the lobby might be recorded, no notice was given to the employees that a recording device had been installed inside their office.

Why police supervisors thought it was necessary to eavesdrop instead of telling the employees that they were being recorded is unclear. Perhaps it was simply their nature to seek to "catch the bad guys" who violated work rules rather than giving the employees information that would probably have prevented the violations. [more ...]

An hour after former President Bush signed the new FISA bill into law, the ACLU and other civil liberties groups filed a federal lawsuit in New York challenging it. Oral arguments will be heard Wednesday. (Received by e-mail, no link yet.)

The American Civil Liberties Union will be in court Wednesday for oral arguments in its landmark challenge to the unconstitutional FISA Amendments Act (FAA), which gives the government virtually unchecked power to intercept Americans' international e-mails and telephone calls. The ACLU filed a lawsuit to stop the government from spying under the FAA less than an hour after the Act was signed into law by President Bush on July 10, 2008. Recent news reports have indicated that the National Security Agency has exceeded the already overbroad limits granted to it under the FAA.

More...

This post from Liza Goitein of the Brennan Center for Justice guestblogged at Balkinization is a very good explanatory of why the issue is such a difficult one in current times. The key graf for me:

The U.S. thus has authority under domestic law to apply the same detention rule that the law of war establishes in international armed conflict. The problem with this arrangement is that the rules that apply in international armed conflict are a poor fit for the war we’re actually fighting. Wars against other nations differ from wars against irregular forces, and those differences are at least intuitively understood by the American public and the rest of the world.

Addressing arguments such as the ones I have made (and here), Goitein writes:

Via Susie Madrak, Bob Herbert:

Policies that were wrong under George W. Bush are no less wrong because Barack Obama is in the White House.

[It is] distressing is the curtain of secrecy the Obama administration has kept drawn over shameful abuses that should be brought into the light of day. . . . The Obama administration is also continuing the Bush administration’s abuse of the state-secrets privilege. . . . The Bush and Obama view of the state-secrets privilege effectively bars any real examination of such egregious mistakes.

The new president’s excessively cautious approach to the national security and civil liberties outrages of the Bush administration are unacceptable, and the organizations and individuals committed to fairness, justice and the rule of law — the Center for Constitutional Rights, the American Civil Liberties Union, and many others — should intensify their efforts to get the new administration to do the right thing.

(Emphasis supplied.) To be fair, Herbert criticizes some Obama policies that I actually agree with. But if you disagree with these and others, take Herbert's advice to heart -- "intensify your efforts to get [Obama] to do the right thing."

Speaking for me only

President Obama will sign an executive order tomorrow extending health care and other benefits to the gay /lesbian partners of federal employees

At Huffpo: Obama Offers Gays a Consolation Prize.

The Justice Department filed a brief today (available here) in a federal case in California. Gay rights groups are outraged.

This week, the Obama administration is facing the ire of gay rights groups after it filed a brief in California federal court defending the Defense of Marriage Act and calling it a "valid exercise of Congress' power" that is saving taxpayers money.

The Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA, was signed into law by President Clinton in 1996. It doesn't prohibit same-sex marriages; instead, it says that no state "shall be required" to honor same-sex marriages taking place elsewhere or any "right or claim arising from such relationship."

Human Rights Campaign, Lambda Legal, the ACLU and other groups issued a joint statement today blasting the filing: [More...]

You can watch here.

My views here.

Jeralyn's views here.

Sen. Feingold's letter to President Obama on preventive detention here.

After 9/11, some overzealous protectors of the homeland's security began to suspect anyone who pointed a camera at a public building, a bridge, or a railroad yard of plotting a terrorist attack. One of the most unlikely terrorist suspects was 55-year-old Shirley Scheier, a fine arts professor at the University of Washington who was frisked, handcuffed, and aggressively interrogated while being detained in the back of a squad car for more than half an hour -- all because she took pictures of electrical power lines for use in an academic project.

With the ACLU's help, Scheier sued the City of Snohomish's police officers for violating her Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable searches and seizures. The city's insurer argued that the officers entertained a reasonable suspicion that Scheier was up to no good because she left quickly after the electrical substation's security provider approached her (who wouldn't?) and because she had maps in her car (who doesn't?).

U.S. District Court Judge John Coughenour disagreed. [more ...]

Colorado is getting a spiffy new data-mining program, courtesy of a federal budget earmark. Of course, that's not what they call it (they call it a "crime fighting tool"), but a little digging shows that's what it is and many other states(Arizona is one) are using it too.

Another hint:

On Tues. May 26th the Colorado Information Sharing Consortium will hold a special news conference on the steps of the state capitol to unveil its latest crime fighting tool, a statewide data sharing network called “COPLINK”. This new system will allow street cops and investigators to analyze information regarding individuals, property, vehicles, and incidents from a variety of state and local law enforcement records.

Coplink is sold by Knowledge Computing Corp. [More...]