Todays wingnut alert: Justice Antonin Scalia

Misogynist is an appropriate description to use when describing Scalia and his 'thoughts' on the Constitution and what and/or who it represents. From RawStory:

Roe v. Wade 'a total absurdity,' Scalia told audience

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia's belief that women have no protection under the constitution could herald the return of officially-sanctioned gender discrimination, a prominent Washington lawyer says.

Justice Scalia reiterated his position that the Constitution's 14th Amendment doesn't guarantee protection against discrimination on the basis of gender or sexual orientation in a magazine interview published this month.

"Certainly the Constitution does not require discrimination on the basis of sex," Scalia told California Lawyer(Q&A w/Scalia). "The only issue is whether it prohibits it. It doesn't. Nobody ever thought that that's what it meant. Nobody ever voted for that."

This mental midget sits on the highest court in the country and has for 24 friggin years. That he would suggest such a strict interpretation of the Constitution is worrisome and downright disgusting. Why does he think he is the only individual that knows what the founding fathers meant? SCOTUS has steadfastly upheld civil rights for all citizens, except of course gay individuals, and hopefully will continue to do so, even though one of the sitting justices doesn't accept the premise of equal protection under the law for everyone.

ICE loses 4th Amendment civil rights case.

Bet this ruling will piss off a lot of folks.You know, the ones who believe no one should have rights under our constitution, except those with money and power. From the National Law Journal link:

Three years of work by students in Yale Law School's Worker and Immigrant Rights Advocacy Clinic paid off in a big way last week, when a federal judge ruled that officials with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement may be sued for civil rights violations. 

The ruling, issued by Judge Stefan Underhill of the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut, said that ICE officials aren't immune from such suits, and that the court has jurisdiction over this type of immigration case. 

"We believe this is the most sweeping decision by a district court on this issue," said Muneer Ahmad, the director of the clinic. "It means that ICE, as a law enforcement agency, is subject to the same measures of constitutional accountability as other agencies."

*snip*

The case stems from an ICE raid on the predominantly Hispanic Fair Haven section of New Haven, Conn., in June 2007. Thirty-two people were arrested during the three-day raid, most of them bystanders and not the people with criminal backgrounds for whom ICE agents were looking, Ahmad said. 

The clinic began representing some of those arrested in their immigration cases in 2007, and in 2009 filed Diaz-Bernal v. Myers, the civil rights case. The plaintiffs argue that top-level ICE officials instituted policies and programs that violated the Fourth Amendment rights of the 11 plaintiffs. For example, they alleged, ICE officers entered numerous homes without search warrants or consent during the raid. The government responded with a motion to dismiss the majority of the case. 

Although Underhill dismissed some minor claims, he found that the most important ones have enough merit to go forward, Ahmad said.

Read the complaint here. Three and a half years to get this case to a decision. The government will always drag it heels when those in charge know they fucked up.Chalk up a win, however fleeting, to the brown people and those legal minds that saw through the governmental fuckery and kept doggedly pursuing this issue on their behalf.

Civil rights icon Dorothy Height dies.

She walked the walk, with Martin. For 40 years she championed the cause of civil rights and woman's rights. She passed away at the age of 98. From the link:

As a teenager, Height marched in New York's Times Square shouting, "Stop the lynching." In the 1950s and 1960s, she was the leading woman helping King and other activists orchestrate the civil rights movement, often reminding the men heading the movement not to underestimate their women counterparts.

One of Height's sayings was, "If the time is not ripe, we have to ripen the time." She liked to quote 19th century abolitionist Frederick Douglass, who said that the three effective ways to fight for justice are to "agitate, agitate, agitate."

 Height was on the platform at the Lincoln Memorial, sitting only a few feet from King, when he gave his famous "I have a dream" speech at the March on Washington in 1963.

Benjamin Hook also passed away last week. Both these individuals put their lives on the line to further the cause of civil rights for all people.

We have lost two of best within a weeks time. :( Their contributions must be remembered and lauded as they spoke truth to power when it was dangerous to do so.

Update: KO does a great piece on Ms. Height in the first half of the video below. Then, he talks about the horseshit the state of AZ is trying to pass for people of color..the color brown.

A voice of the civil rights movement has died.

Odetta could sing anything. Blues, ballads, hymns and folk music..Odetta made it all sound beautiful. Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and Janis Joplin were influenced by her, and she sang their music as well. Click here to listen to her sing Dylan's Masters of War.

She died at the age of 77 in NYC Tuesday. Of heart disease. She had hoped to sing at Obama's inauguration next month. The NYT has a good piece up about her here. From the article:

Odetta sang at the march on Washington, a pivotal event in the civil rights movement, in August 1963. Her song that day was “O Freedom,” dating to slavery days: “O freedom, O freedom, O freedom over me, And before I’d be a slave, I’d be buried in my grave, And go home to my Lord and be free.”

Odetta Holmes was born in Birmingham, Ala., on Dec. 31, 1930, in the depths of the Depression. The music of that time and place — particularly prison songs and work songs recorded in the fields of the Deep South — shaped her life.

Rest in peace sweet woman.

Tags: Odetta dies at 77, Odetta Holmes

ACLU representing RNC protesters

From the fine folks at the Real News Network. From their website:

Chuck Samuelson of the ACLU says much of the police repression during the RNC was based on law coming out of the Patriot Act.

The right to assembly, just another of our civil rights being circumvented by the assholes in the Bush Administration.

US Govt wants to fingerprint the World..

At least the part of the world that uses air travel. That is huge portion of the world anyway you slice or dice it.

I mean..they want to fingerprint people that aren't even residents of the U.S. nor are they visiting the U.S. We are, according to the EU, Blackmailing them into accepting this little act of International Big Brotherism. From WaPo:

If approved by the European Parliament, the measure would mean that precisely identifying information on tens of millions of citizens will be added in coming years to databases that could be shared by friendly governments around the world.-You know we are friendly with everyone but the Axis of Evil guys. I like Sophie's take on this horseshit:

"It seems like a steamroller," said Sophie in 't Veld, a Dutch member of parliament who follows privacy and security issues. "There is a new trend in particular in the U.S., the E.U. and Australia to register every single detail of our life. We're tagged. They can follow everything we do. They know where we are. The whole question is: What for? Does this actually make the world a safer place?"

Of course it doesn't make us safer, its all about control...

Terror suspect database catches few terrorists but does capture anti-war activists

Almost 20,000 people ended up, for whatever reason, in the govt's terrorist database. That..is a lot of people wouldn't you say?

Get this...the govt wants to 'open up' the list to private entities. You know, we contract so fucking much of our needs out these days, it shouldn't surprise anyone that the fuckwits wish to make all sorts of lists, like the airline passenger list, available to people outside the govt. From the WaPo article:

A range of state, local and federal agencies as well as U.S. embassies overseas rely on the database to pinpoint terrorism suspects, who can be identified at borders or even during routine traffic stops. The database consolidates a dozen government watch lists, as well as a growing amount of information from various sources, including airline passenger data. The government said it was planning to expand the data-sharing to private-sector groups with a "substantial bearing on homeland security," though officials would not be more specific.

Of course they wouldn't be specific..please..its all a big freaking secret don't you know? Over half of the folks 'detained' were collared by the folks at Customs and Border Patrol. Another snippet of the WaPo article here:

Slightly more than half of the 20,000 encounters last year were logged by Customs and Border Protection officers, who turned back or handed over to authorities 550 people, most of them foreigners, Customs officials said. FBI and other officials said that they could not provide data on the number of people arrested or denied entry for the other half of the database hits. FBI officials indicated that the number of arrests was small.

So, if the number of arrests are small..why keep all this information on everyone? It's a valid question. It makes one wonder what qualifies someone to be included on this damn list. It makes on wonder who's civil rights are being violated and what is the determining factor for all this bullshit.

David Sobel, senior counsel with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a privacy organization, said the numbers "suggest a staggeringly high rate of false positives with respect to the identification of supposed terrorists." He added that "this really confirms the long-standing fear that this list is inaccurate and ultimately ineffective as an anti-terrorism tool."

False-positives..gee, that makes ya feel all warm and fuzzy don't it? Nothing this dimwits do makes me feel warm and fuzzy with regard to protecting Americans by violating their civil rights. We do not know what they did to get on the list, we have no idea what the govt does with the information once its deemed the individual isn't a threat to America. But we do know this..THEY KEEP THE INFO FOR 99 YEARS. Let me type that again..they keep it for 99 freaking years.

Its all bullshit in a barrel folks.

If you think for one minute YOUR not on this list..think again. Being an anti-war activist could damn well land your happy ass on this 'database'. Let's take an example from the WaPo writeup, Francisco "Kiko" Martinez, a Colorado lawyer and civil-rights activist:

"A driver's license check revealed [Martinez] as a possible individual having ties with terrorism," a state trooper wrote after a 2004 stop near Chicago, according to one report.

Last year, Martinez sued the federal government, claiming that he was unlawfully detained and that he was included on a watch list as a result of his political activities.

Last month, he won a $106,500 settlement from federal, state and tribal authorities. Though the settlement did not address any of the underlying constitutional claims, Martinez asserted that it "shows that I shouldn't have been on this terrorism watch list in the first place" and that "the government is misusing this so-called war against terrorism to target its domestic political opponents."

Like I said..bullshit in a barrel.

Crossposted at Bring it On! and Sirens Chronicles


Tags: War on Terror, Federal Fuckwits at the Helm, Antiwar Activists, Government Database

Head of DoJ Civil Rights Div cutting and running.

This makes an even dozen I believe..or damn close to it. From WaPo:

The head of the Justice Department's embattled Civil Rights Division is to resign at the end of August, officials said yesterday, making him the latest in a series of senior political appointees to leave the agency amid continued controversy over Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales.

Wan J. Kim, the assistant attorney general for civil rights since November 2005, has been closely questioned by congressional Democrats about the administration's policy decisions and allegations by former career officials of improper hiring within the division, mostly under his predecessor.

The hits just keep on coming at the DoJ...who's running the fucking place now? Is anyone home? Christ, it's a mess at our nations highest law office. The NYT gives us their spin here.

Tags: DoJ, Wan Kim, Civil Rights, cut and run