Police state round-up

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.