In those heady (for fans of totalitarianism, anyway) days after 9/11, one of the Homeland Security programs being floated was recruiting postal carriers, utility workers and the like to become citizen snoops, ferreting out activity that could be related to terrorism. It was roundly criticized and was cancelled almost as quickly as it was announced.

Except it wasn't.

The Bush Administration's war on the Constitution, er, I mean, war on terror continues.  The Baltimore Sun reported Friday about more anti-terrorism spying against peace activists.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland is suing the Maryland State Police to get records it believes may show local authorities aided the federal government in spying on peace activists during several annual protests outside the National Security Agency.

It seems that the government has finally figured out how to coordinate its investigations with local authorities.  Upholding the fine tradition of J. Edgar Hoover's FBI, the Maryland State Police's initial response to the ACLU's Public Information Act request suggests the potential infiltration of the peace groups involved in the lawsuit.

And who is this fringe, radical threat to national security?

It is the Nobel Peace Prize winning American Friends Service Committee.

... more below the fold about the eroding of our Constitution...

Seriously, Joe needs to take some time away from his YouTube watching and McCain duties to pay a little bit of attention to what is supposed to be one of his jobs: oversight on Homeland Security. The latest bit of news from the GAO isn't good, particularly for those of us living in port cities.

WASHINGTON -- A Department of Homeland Security program to strengthen port security has gaps that terrorists could exploit to smuggle weapons of mass destruction in cargo containers, congressional investigators said Tuesday.

Under the program, roughly 8,000 importers, port authorities and air, sea and land carriers are granted benefits such as reduced scrutiny of their cargo. In exchange, the companies submit a security plan that must meet U.S. Customs and Border Protection's minimum standards and allow officials to verify that their measures are being followed.

A GAO report in 2005 found that many of the companies were receiving the reduced cargo scrutiny without the required full vetting by U.S. Customs, a division of Homeland Security. The agency has since made some improvements, but the new report found that customs officials still couldn't provide guarantees that companies were in compliance.

Among the Senators quoted in the story are Schumer, Murray, and Collins--the ranking member on his committee. Here's yet another serious failure on the part of Homeland Security, and Lieberman is nowhere to be seen. It would appear that his self-appointed role as the administration's BFF has trumped his duties to his country. No great surprise, it is Lieberman we're talking about here. But could at least pretend to make an effort?

The outrages from the ironically named Department of Homeland Security just keep coming.  Now, it's been revealed that in the event of a major hurricane heading toward the lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas, citizenship documents will be checked by the Border Patrol before anyone gets on the buses in place like Brownsville, McAllen, and the other cities and towns in the Valley.  And the Border Patrol will maintain its checkpoints on the roads heading north, presumably to assure that those who are evacuating themselves and their families in privately-owned vehicles aren't harboring illegal aliens:

"It's business as usual at the checkpoints," said Dan Doty, spokesman for CBP's Rio Grande Valley sector. "We'll still check everybody."

By Noam Biale, Advocacy Coordinator for the ACLU Technology and Liberty Program

It’s not a good day to be Tim Pawlenty.  

The Republican governor of Minnesota distinguished himself earlier this month by becoming the only governor in the country to veto an anti-Real ID bill. Eighteen other states had already rejected this Bush administration boondoggle, which would turn state driver’s licenses into national identity cards. By a bipartisan majority, the Minnesota legislature passed a provision to its transportation budget that would have allowed the Governor to delay implementation of Real ID until funding could be secured from the federal government, and the law’s multiple privacy and security problems could be fixed.  

This was originally posted on Citizen Orange.

It may not be politically viable, I may be attacking allies in this post, but someone needs to say it.  In the wake of shocking exposes in the New York Times, The Washington Post, and 60 Minutes, it looks like there's actually some movement from the U.S. government to enact some pro-migrant, or better said, less anti-migrant federal legislation.   Nina Bernstein and Julia Preston of the New York Times report in "Better Health Care Sought for Detained Immigrants".

President Bush insists his first priority is protecting the American people.  His policies at home and abroad, he likes to say, are designed to make us safer.  Some of these policies are highly visible, such as reducing Iraq to bloody rubble, or encouraging Israel to do the same in Lebanon, or siccing the rabid John Bolton on a cowed United Nations, or reading your mail and listening to your phone conversations.  The president receives as much credit as he deserves for these bold protective measures.

But some Bush administration policies protect us in far subtler ways, and it’s high time the president was recognized for them.  In the Departments of  Defense and Homeland Security, to cite just two examples, the Bush administration is making the big security picture a lot brighter by getting all those critical little things just right.

While we're all distracted by the Clinton-McCain tag team on Obama and therefore on Democratic chances in November, the Bush Administration is quietly attempting to strangle privacy rights and move one step closer to the inescapable Big Brother society.  Not content with torturing whomever they want to obtain usually inaccurate information (including by crushing the testicles of children) and listening in on any phone call or email they please without even a warrant from a rubberstamp court, they are now attempting to requisition military satellites for use on domestic targets in potential violation of the Posse Comitatus Act.

Original article, subtitled "Deportation is the Least of Your Worries!", by Harry Browne via Counterpunch.com.

Surprise, surprise.  A peace activist comes to the US and is turned away immediately.  What are we really scared of?

SPRINGDALE - Hour after hour, for four full days, Adriana Torres-Flores was locked away and forgotten in 8 1/2-by-9 1/2-foot cell in the Washington County Courthouse, with only a metal table, two benches and a light bulb that never went out. She had nothing to eat or drink. There was no toilet. Thursday passed. Then Friday, Saturday and Sunday - although Torres-Flores had no watch to tell the time. She slept on the floor with her head on a shoe.

She drank her own urine, she said.

Panicked and afraid she would die, Torres-Flores pounded on the steel door with her hands and feet, and yelled. No one heard her. The threat of snow had thinned the courthouse staff Friday.

The building was closed all weekend.

It was Monday morning before the bailiff who had put her in the holding cell, intending to have her taken to jail, opened the door and realized his mistake.

By Shenna Bellows, executive director, Maine Civil Liberties Union

Maine was the first state to opt out of the REAL ID, a de facto national identification card.  We may be the last.  The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has thrown down the gauntlet, telling Mainers we won’t be able to fly or will be subjected to horrible screening beginning May 11 if we don’t cave to the Bush administration in accepting REAL ID.  

Which seems to be the norm for this country, just look at the leadership that's allowed to continue,
across the board, on any subject one might pick!

A Los Angeles man with mental problems,
who spent three months lost in Mexico after being deported despite being a U.S. citizen, sued homeland security
and immigration officials on Wednesday.

Try to wrap your head around this:

NYPD Seeks an Air Monitor Crackdown for New Yorkers

Damn you, Osama bin Laden! Here's another rotten thing you've done to us: After 9/11, untold thousands of New Yorkers bought machines that detect traces of biological, chemical, and radiological weapons. But a lot of these machines didn't work right, and when they registered false alarms, the police had to spend millions of dollars chasing bad leads and throwing the public into a state of raw panic.

Two days ago I heard a very brief blurb on MSNBC, reporting that Michael Chertoff, from the goodness of his heart, is filling all vacant positions within Homeland Security. Packing the house. Stacking the deck.  No doubt with the same sterling characters which have filled the halls of DOJ, DOD, Commerce, and the State Department.

Chertoff was reported as saying that he "didn't want to drop the ball and leave the new President with staff vacancies."

The kicker is that I have spent the past 2 days searching for any article in the national press that reports on this blatant power play.

Homeland Security's got another category of dangerous persons to add to their growing list of security concerns: abused immigrant spouses of US citizens and permanent residents.

As an extreme frequent commercial airline customer ( i hate the term frequent flier because inevitably the time spent traveling to and from the airport, the check in, the line waiting to prove your existence to a person making the same amount of money as the guy making the Big Mac on the other end of the terminal, the time carefully unpacking your laptop and other electronics in order that the x-ray not be blocked by my microns thick leather laptop case, untying and retying my shoelaces, the layovers, the waits at the gate, the oftentimes maddening airplane taxi to and from the runway, and of course waiting and praying that the last piece of luggage off the plane is your missing bag is longer than time in the air) I was happy to find and read a recent NY Times OpEd piece by pilot and Time JetLagged blog writer Patrick Smith.

Busy, they're always busy...

WaPo--The FBI is embarking on a $1 billion effort to build the world's largest computer database of peoples' physical characteristics, a project that would give the government unprecedented abilities to identify individuals in the United States and abroad.