The Justice Department claims a Washington Post article about the potential of national security letters for the invasion of privacy of ordinary Americans is inaccurate -- in 17 respects.

WAPO publisher Len Downie disagrees.

the "Justice Department letter does not document any inaccuracies in our story on national security letters, which revealed the widespread use and limited oversight of this investigative tool. The letter relies on words like 'implies' and 'insinuates' to assert claims the story does not make. The story speaks for itself."

I wrote at length about the WAPO article here.

Jeff at Protein Wisdom finds a New Zealand news article reporting that Quantas and Air New Zealand have adopted a policy that prohibits men from sitting next to unacompanied children on planes.

Political correctness gone mad? How about sheer idiocy? All men ought to be seeing red over this one. Jeff says:

....what happens when a westernized country becomes enthralled with identity politics (and overly fearful of victim litigation). Christ. Guilty until proven innocent. Hate crime legislation. Fear of giving offense. Empowering the frequently and easily offended in the name of “tolerance”. What a mess we’ve made of things.

I don't buy that the policy is grounded either in political correctness or tolerance. I'd call it blatant stereotyping that the airlines have been bullied into by one increasingly dangerous lobby: victimhood.

Miami is taking new steps to keep terrorists off guard...asking Americans to supply ID papers when conducting ordinary activities like entering a bank or hotel or riding a bus or train.

Both uniformed and plainclothes police will ride buses and trains, while others will conduct longer-term surveillance operations. "People are definitely going to notice it," Fernandez said. "We want that shock. We want that awe. But at the same time, we don't want people to feel their rights are being threatened. We need them to be our eyes and ears."

Is this what we've become? Who said the terrorists didn't win the terror war?

[Via Atrios.]

Update: At least in Denver, the authorities are moving slowly in deciding whether to prosecute a woman who refused to show identification while riding a bus to work:

"Passengers aren't required to carry passports or any other identification documents in order to ride to work on a public bus," [ACLU Director Mark Silverstein] said.

Think Progress exposes Bush's U-Turn on Immigration. Undocumented residents are no longer "hard working citizens" in his eyes. They have morphed into "terrorists, drug dealers, and criminals."

CNN has more on Bush's new immigration plan.

Update: Digby, as usual, makes tremendous sense on the issue.

by TChris

The Supreme Court views public high school administrators as the publishers of school newspapers. Freedom of the press, it is said, belongs to those who own the press, and the school administration has a publisher’s right to withhold content it deems contrary to "legitimate pedagogical concerns." The analysis follows a certain logic, but a public school newspaper belongs to the public, not just the school, and we should be concerned when we allow public officials to censor public discourse.

Administrators at the Oak Ridge (Tennessee) High School rounded up all 1,800 copies of the Oak Leaf because -- horrors! -- the student journalists wrote about topics relevant to their lives: birth control and tattoos.

The birth control article listed success rates for varying methods and gave locations where students could obtain contraceptives. The paper also contained a photo of an unidentified student’s tattoo, and [Superintendent] Bailey said the student had not told her parents about getting the tattoo.

“I have a problem with the idea of putting something in the paper that makes us a part of hiding something from the parents,” he said.

It’s a safe bet that the tattoo picture alone wouldn’t have instigated the paper’s recall. (More here and here.)

This is scary stuff. From Walter Pincus at the Washington Post:

The Defense Department has expanded its programs aimed at gathering and analyzing intelligence within the United States, creating new agencies, adding personnel and seeking additional legal authority for domestic security activities in the post-9/11 world.

The moves have taken place on several fronts. The White House is considering expanding the power of a little-known Pentagon agency called the Counterintelligence Field Activity, or CIFA, which was created three years ago. The proposal, made by a presidential commission, would transform CIFA from an office that coordinates Pentagon security efforts -- including protecting military facilities from attack -- to one that also has authority to investigate crimes within the United States such as treason, foreign or terrorist sabotage or even economic espionage.

by TChris

What’s keeping the Ocean County, NJ board from passing a resolution that would permit a law enforcement officer’s death benefits to be paid to her domestic partner?

At the center of the dispute is Lt. Laurel Hester, 49, a 23-year investigator for the Ocean County Prosecutor's office who is fighting lung cancer. Hester wants the county to pass a resolution as provided for by New Jersey's 18-month-old Domestic Partners Act, which gives counties and cities the power to extend pension and health care benefits to the gay partners of employees if they so choose.

Hester, of Point Pleasant, fears that without her $13,000 death benefit, partner Stacie Andree, 30, will be forced to sell the house they now share after Hester die.

More than a hundred other governmental entities in New Jersey have adopted domestic partnership benefit resolutions. And more than a hundred supporters of Hester who attended a rally on her behalf are wondering why Ocean County hasn’t taken that step.

by TChris

McLennan County, Texas, hoping to protect the president from the negative publicity that attended Cindy Sheehan’s protest outside the grounds of his Crawford ranch, enacted new ordinances that prohibit parking and camping along roadsides within several miles of the ranch. The ordinances didn’t deter the dozen anti-war protestors who were arrested today, bringing a new wave of the very publicity that the president’s local supporters hoped to avoid.

The arrests were made by more than two dozen deputies who calmly approached the demonstrators in their tents and asked if they wanted to walk out on their own or be carried. Two chose to be carried. They were to be taken to jail for booking.

Happy Thanksgiving, courtesy of McLennan County.

by TChris

Some police officers stop motorists for “driving while black,” a practice that caused some jurisdictions to require officers to keep records that justify their decisions to initiate traffic stops. Some officers make unwarranted stops of individuals to satisfy unwritten “quota” systems that reward officers with promotions if they are aggressive in their decisions to stop and frisk individuals in the hope that the encounter will uncover drugs or a gun. Both may be occurring in Baltimore, where (according to police documents reviewed by the Baltimore Sun) tens of thousands of stops occurred last year, frequently accompanied by frisks of the detained individuals.

Patrol officers - whose productivity is measured in large part by how many stops and arrests they make - have told their union representatives that what could be an effective tool for reducing crime is being overused in a daily push to ratchet up statistics. Some call stop-and-frisks a "VCR detail" - for violation of civil rights, according to Lt. Frederick V. Roussey, the president of the police union.

by TChris

The FBI thinks environmental activists (and animal rights activists) are the most serious domestic terrorist threat facing the US, so it isn’t surprising that it took 50 FBI agents to raid the home of a 27 year old environmentalist who, it turns out, hadn’t violated any laws. The FBI thought Josh Connole was responsible for vandalizing SUV’s at dealerships in the Los Angeles area. He was arrested and held for four days before (to the FBI’s embarrassment) the real culprit was discovered. (TalkLeft background here.)

An assistant U.S. attorney had advised the FBI that it lacked probable cause to arrest Connole, but Special Agent Edward Ochotorena arrested him anyway. FBI agents were following Connole when they noticed that he was going toward a Pomona police station. Ochotorena arrested Connole for “officer safety” reasons (apparently believing it’s unsafe to allow environmentalists into a police building), but Connole was actually going to the police station to report that he was being followed.

Ochotorena should have realized his error and immediately released Connole, particularly after the AUSA chewed him out for making the bogus arrest.

The Washington Post takes a well-deserved swipe at Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo Sunday. Tancredo is proposing that citizenship be denied to U.S. born children of undocumented residents. Apparently he has never read the 14th Amendment.

The 14th Amendment begins: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside." Not "all persons except children of illegal immigrants," not "all persons except those Congress exempts in moments of nativism." All persons.

Tancredo's off the wall theory is that these children are similar to diplomats in that they are not subject to U.S. jurisdiction.

by TChris

Supporters of the most obnoxious provisions of the Patriot Act contend that national security is more important than privacy or civil liberties. But many of the Act's supporters in Congress are even more concerned about their continuing receipt of campaign contributions from the corporate world. Corporate opposition to the Patriot Act captures their attention more readily than impassioned pleas from civil rights advocates.

Fearing a terrorist attack, the FBI descended on casinos, car rental agencies, storage warehouses, and other Las Vegas businesses with sheaves of "national security letters" demanding financial records covering about 1 million revelers. Startled business owners who questioned the action were told they had one choice: cough up their documents or wind up in court.

Any time a federal law burdens a significant number of businesses, Congress hears about it.

"Businesses want to cooperate in the war on terrorism, but this type of unchecked government power goes a little over the line," says Bob Shepler, director of corporate finance at the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM).