Police state round-up

Posted by Joshua Holland at 9:30 AM on October 18, 2006.

Let's see...

In CounterPunch, Stephen Pearcy details a frightening visit paid by the Secret Service to a 14 year-old honors' student who had some art on her MySpace page that scared the preznit's minders.

The agents told [Julia's Mom] that since the art included the words, "Kill Bush," and since it was accessible to anyone on the Internet, there was a very strong likelihood that someone-possibly a terrorist from a foreign country-might see the image and be inspired to act upon it. Thus, they reasoned, even if Julia only meant to be funny, the art put the President in grave danger.

The S.S. agents left and made a beeline directly to Julia's school, C.K. McClatchy High School, the alma mater of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy ('54) (and my mother ('52)).

Notwithstanding that Julia posted the artwork on MySpace when she was 13 and removed it last summer, and that the President had come to Sacramento twice while Julia's art remained inconsequential, the agents had suddenly determined that time was of the essence. They ordered school officials to have Julia promptly removed from class and brought to the school office, where they proceeded to grill her about her art.

Many critics of the S.S.' creation of a "sense of urgency" to contact Julia believe that it was tactically intended to send a chilling message to other students. Many lawyers, activists and free speech advocates believe that the goal of the S.S. was to generally deter young people from being too critical of the President. And what better way to send a chilling message to students than for the S.S. to pull a student out of class at a large public school?

In the school's office, the S.S. agents interrogated Julia, reducing her to tears at many points. They demanded to know whether she or her parents belonged to any subversive organizations, and they often raised their voices, especially when they detected that Julia was either scared or didn't understand their ambiguous questions.

On the bright side, Julia was not declared an enemy combatant nor was she stripped of citizenship. Whew!

***

Bush signed the Torture Bill today. In a sure sign that Orwell was born in the wrong era, we learn that this was going on at the same time:

While Bush was signing the terror detainee bill, some opponents were being arrested outside.

Authorities say 16 people are charged with impeding access to a White House entrance. They were hauled away from a sidewalk.

The demonstrators come from a coalition of religious groups and had been shouting slogans like "Bush is the terrorist" and "Torture is a crime."

Tell your grandkids that there was a time in this country when people were guaranteed the right to assemble peaceably and seek redress from the government for whatever grievances they may have had. Good times.

Here's Bruce Ackerman's take on the bill. I've long been a fan.

And Froomkin:

The new law vaguely bans torture -- but makes the administration the arbiter of what is torture and what isn't. It allows the president to imprison indefinitely anyone he decides falls under a wide-ranging new definition of unlawful combatant. It suspends the Great Writ of habeas corpus for detainees. It allows coerced testimony at trial. It immunizes retroactively interrogators who may have engaged in torture.

Here's what Bush had to say at his signing ceremony in the East Room: "The bill I sign today helps secure this country, and it sends a clear message: This nation is patient and decent and fair, and we will never back down from the threats to our freedom."

But that may not be the "clear message" the new law sends most people.

Here's the clear message the law sends to the world: America makes its own rules. The law would apparently subject terror suspects to some of the same sorts of brutal interrogation tactics that have historically been prosecuted as war crimes when committed against Americans.

Here's the clear message to the voters: This Congress is willing to rubberstamp pretty much any White House initiative it sees as being in its short-term political interests. (And I don't just mean the Republicans; 12 Senate Democrats and 32 House Democrats voted for the bill as well.)

On that note, let me say that I understand entirely why Sherrod Brown, a favorite legislator and a very, very good guy, felt compelled to vote for it. He's in a tight race with Mike DeWine for an Ohio Senate seat, DeWine's played the national security angle to the hilt and the bill had enough support to pass with or without his vote. Brown will do so much good in the Senate on issues like trade, on economic justice and on limiting corporate abuse and will be a reliable vote to withdrawal from Iraq.

And yet, I don't care about all that. It's simply unacceptable. I don't mind pragmatism, but the line has to be drawn somewhere, and, in my mind, torture is the place. I still support Brown's candidacy, but I weep for a political culture in which opposing torture makes a person look "soft."

***

There's a debate about Arlen Spectre's role in the passage of the bill. Read about it here. I don't know which side has it right, but it has long been clear that when it comes to executive power and the rules guiding the War on Terrr, the "moderate" and "independent" Republicans can be expected to fold -- every time -- when the chips are down. Shame on those Dems that fool themselves into believing otherwise.

Sign the "People's Signing Statement" rejecting torture in America, sponsored by the Washington Region Religious Campaign Against Torture, here.

***

Lynne Stewart, referred to in virtually every account as a "radical attorney," was sentenced to prison for transmitting communications from her client, The Blind Sheikh, to the outside world. But she got off light, and viewed the day as a "victory."

(Bias alert: a good friend did some legal work on Stewart's behalf and got me drunk and talked my ear off about everything that was wrong with the case, in her view.)

Stewart's admitted to passing messages from Sheikh Omar-Abdel Rahman, convicted of planning a series of attacks in the New York area in 1995, to supporters outside. She claims she didn't know what one crucial message contained: a note withdrawing the Sheikh's support for a cease-fire between his followers and the Egyptian government. My friend said she thought it was inhuman to deprive the Sheikh of all communication with the outside world, saying "we don't throw people down a well in this country." Actually, if they're terrorists, the evidence is that we do. Frankly, I'm not sure there aren't cases when it's appropriate.

Anyway, she admits to screwing up, but the issue at hand is that DOJ, under John Ashcroft, over-charged the case for purely political reasons. Stewart, who faces breast cancer, was looking at 30 years (as was her translator) on a raft of terrorism charges.

She got 28 months. The translator got 20 months. A postal worker who relayed the messages to Egyptian militants was given 20 years.

[Judge] Koeltl noted … that neither Stewart's actions nor those of her co-defendants, translator Mohammed Yousry and legal assistant Ahmed Sattar, resulted in violence here or overseas. Having lashed Stewart for her criminal conduct, the judge pivoted, commending her for leading an otherwise exemplary life as a legal advocate for the poor, despised and dispossessed.

"Ms. Stewart performed a public service, not only to her clients but to the nation," Koeltl said. "She's made an extraordinary contribution."

Taken as a whole, the judge argued, her accomplishments amounted to a strong argument for departing from nonbinding federal guidelines that could have led him to impose a 30-year sentence.

Koeltl's decision to mete out a comparatively mild sentence amounted to a slap at federal prosecutors in a case that former Attorney General John Ashcroft repeatedly had hailed as a nationwide model.

But more than a few legal observers divined a message in the judge's sentences.

"There's no doubt the government has tried to use this case to chill effective advocacy in terror cases," said Neal Sonnett, a former federal prosecutor and past chair of the American Bar Association's Criminal Justice Section and current chair of the task force on treatment of enemy combatants. "I'm delighted the judge was not swayed by the frenzy over terrorism."

At TomPaine, Jennifer Van Bergen writes:

The sentence reduction is important not just to Stewart but to all of us because it illustrates distinctions that the Justice Department seems incapable of making these days: the distinction between someone who violates a regulation (not a criminal offense) and someone who engages in terrorist acts or intentionally promotes such ends. The distinction, in the end, between bad judgment and criminal intent, or even between innocence and guilt.

The righties are flipping out (when aren't they in a huff over something?), and the prosecution may appeal the sentence.

***

Quickly:

This:

The American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado on Tuesday accused law enforcement officers of wrongly arresting a Thornton woman with no criminal record while she was nursing her baby and then strip-searching her at the jail because she was named in a botched warrant.

Oh, that's just charming.

And our friends up North get into the act:

B.C. Solicitor General John Les says he backs the federal government's controversial "three strikes" legislation that will make it easier to impose indefinite prison sentences on violent criminals.

The B.C. Civil Liberties Association has called the bill "sophomoric" and "offensive to the principle of innocent until proven guilty."

Tagged as: rights, terror, on, war

Joshua Holland is a staff writer at Alternet and a regular contributor to The Gadflyer.