Category Archives: Bye-Bye Ashcroft

Red Alert = Martial Law

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According to an interview with the New Jersey director of the office of counter-terrorism in the the South Jersey Courier Post Online, a red alert means that “all non-critical functions cease.”

Red alert? Stay home, await word
Sunday, March 16, 2003
By TOM BALDWIN
Gannett State Bureau
TRENTON
If the nation escalates to “red alert,” which is the highest in the color-coded readiness against terror, you will be assumed by authorities to be the enemy if you so much as venture outside your home, the state’s anti-terror czar says.
“This state is on top of it,” said Sid Caspersen, New Jersey’s director of the office of counter-terrorism.
Caspersen, a former FBI agent, was briefing reporters, alongside Gov. James E. McGreevey, on Thursday, when for the first time he disclosed the realities of how a red alert would shut the state down.
A red alert would also tear away virtually all personal freedoms to move about and associate.
“Red means all noncritical functions cease,” Caspersen said. “Noncritical would be almost all businesses, except health-related.”
A red alert means there is a severe risk of terrorist attack, according to federal guidelines from the Department of Homeland Security.
“The state will restrict transportation and access to critical locations,” says the state’s new brochure on dealing with terrorism.
“You must adhere to the restrictions announced by authorities and prepare to evacuate, if instructed. Stay alert for emergency messages.”
Caspersen went further than the brochure. “The government agencies would run at a very low threshold,” he said.
“The state police and the emergency management people would take control over the highways.
“You literally are staying home, is what happens, unless you are required to be out. No different than if you had a state of emergency with a snowstorm.”

Here’s text on what a red alert is from the Homeland Security website:

5. Severe Condition (Red). A Severe Condition reflects a severe risk of terrorist attacks. Under most circumstances, the Protective Measures for a Severe Condition are not intended to be sustained for substantial periods of time. In addition to the Protective Measures in the previous Threat Conditions, Federal departments and agencies also should consider the following general measures in addition to the agency-specific Protective Measures that they will develop and implement:
1. Increasing or redirecting personnel to address critical emergency needs;
2. Assigning emergency response personnel and pre-positioning and mobilizing specially trained teams or resources;
3. Monitoring, redirecting, or constraining transportation systems; and
4. Closing public and government facilities.

Johnny Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Evidence — Your Guilt Can Now Be “Inferred”

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Ashcroft Out of Control
Ominous Sequel to USA Patriot Act
By Nat Hentoff for the Village Voice.

Under the proposed Ashcroft bill reversing that court decision, for the first time in U.S. history, secret arrests will be specifically permitted. That section of bill is flatly titled: “Prohibition of Disclosure of Terrorism Investigation Detainee Information.” In Argentina, those secretly taken away were known as “the disappeared.”
Moving on, under Section 501 of the blandly titled Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003, an American citizen can be stripped of citizenship if he or she “becomes a member of, or provides material support to, a group that the United States has designated as a ‘terrorist organization,’ if that group is engaged in hostilities against the United States.”
Until now, in our law, an American could only lose his or her citizenship by declaring a clear intent to abandon it. But~Wand read this carefully from the new bill – “the intent to relinquish nationality need not be manifested in words, but can be inferred from conduct.” (Emphasis added).
Who will do the “inferring”? A member of the Justice Department. Not to worry. As John Ashcroft’s spokeswoman, Barbara Comstock, says of objections to this draft bill: “The [Justice] department’s deliberations are always undertaken with the strongest commitment to our Constitution and civil liberties.” (This is a faith- based administration.)

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Supreme Court Steps Up To The Plate On Texas Death Penalty Case

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Wow. Every now and then those “checks and balances” actually manifest themselves. How cool.
Yes, I am against the death penalty. Those of you who already think of me as a bleeding heart liberal probably already assumed that I’m against it for hippy-dippy reasons, but there’s really more to it than that.
I feel that the risk of putting even a single innocent person to death is far too great — that it’s better to pay for housing all of the criminals than to attempt to save money by putting the “bad ones” to death.
With all the talk lately about the elimination of due process for those suspected of “terrorist” acts, and the kind of non-criminal behavior that is routinely being misinterpreted as “suspicious” activity (like reading certain books at the library, etc.), the prospect of putting suspects to death without due process makes this scenario even more frightening. Without due process, errors can easily be entered into the system. Even with due process, errors can easily be entered into the system. Humans make errors. Plain and simple. Witnesses are mistaken, etc.
Guilty “criminals” are proven “not guilty” after new evidence and the re-opening of investigations all the time.
The situation below is just a perfect example of human error in action. These errors can take years to surface. You can never give these people (or their families) their lives back after the fact.
Supreme Court stops 300th Texas execution

The Supreme Court on Wednesday stopped Texas from executing its 300th inmate since capital punishment resumed in the United States in 1977, granting a dramatic last-minute stay to condemned killer Delma Banks.
Banks’ claims that he was wrongly convicted of a murder 23 years ago were backed by three former federal judges.
His lawyers told justices that he was poorly represented at trial, that prosecutors improperly kept blacks off the jury, and that testimony from two prosecution witnesses was shaky. Banks is black, his victim was white and the jury was all-white.
The court issued the stay, without comment, about 10 minutes before the 44-year-old was to be put to death for the 1980 murder of 16-year-old Richard Wayne Whitehead, a co-worker at a restaurant. Banks shot Whitehead

Santa Cruz Librarians Attempt To Deal With Patriot Act’s “Secret Warrants”

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Libraries post Patriot Act warnings
Santa Cruz branches tell patrons that FBI may spy on them

The signs, posted in the 10 county branches last week and on the library’s Web site, also inform the reader that the USA Patriot Act “prohibits library workers from informing you if federal agents have obtained records about you.”
“Questions about this policy,” patrons are told, “should be directed to Attorney General John Ashcroft, Department of Justice, Washington, D.C. 20530.”
…Section 215 of the act allows FBI agents to obtain a warrant from a secret federal court for library or bookstore records of anyone connected to an investigation of international terrorism or spying.
Unlike conventional search warrants, there is no need for agents to show that the target is suspected of a crime or possesses evidence of a crime. As the Santa Cruz signs indicate, the law prohibits libraries and bookstores from telling their patrons, or anyone else, that the FBI has sought the records.

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Ashcroft Authorizes Unprecedented Number of “Emergency Searches”

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From the “how ’bout telling me something I don’t knowU.S. Expands Clandestine Surveillance Operations
The number of secret searches approved by Ashcroft since the 9/11 attacks is triple those authorized in the previous 20 years.
By Richard B. Schmitt for the LA Times.

The Justice Department has stepped up use of a secretive process that enables the attorney general to personally authorize electronic surveillance and physical searches of suspected terrorists, spies and other national-security threats without immediate court oversight.
Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday he has authorized more than 170 such emergency searches since the Sept. 11 attacks — more than triple the 47 emergency searches that have been authorized by other attorneys general in the last 20 years.
A 1978 law, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, enables the FBI and other investigators to conduct intelligence operations under the supervision of a secret federal tribunal known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. Over the years, the number of such FISA applications has grown — and civil liberties’ groups and defense lawyers have complained that the law has become a tool to dilute suspects’ constitutional rights.
Now, Justice Department officials are pushing the law’s limits even further. Since the Sept. 11 attacks, officials have seized on a provision that allows them to launch emergency searches signed only by the attorney general. The department must still persuade the secret court that the search is justified — but officials have 72 hours from the time the search is launched, and such requests are almost always granted.
Ashcroft’s tally was more fuel for critics of the law who contend that it already operates in the shadows.
“That is a startling increase,” said Timothy Edgar, a legislative counsel for the ACLU.

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Law Professor Will Assist With Articles Of Impeachment, Free Of Charge

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International Law Professor Francis A. Boyle of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign thinks we ought to pre-emptively kick the Shrub’s butt out of office for making pre-emptive strikes a part of our foreign policy. He thinks we should rid ourselves of Ashcroft while we’re at it. (I think he’s forgetting somebody…But two out of three ain’t bad.)
Preemptive impeachment
Law professor stands ready to draft articles for any member of the House
By K

Patriotism Perverted: UnPatriot II (Domestic Security Enhancement Act)

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Patriotism Perverted
By Dan Gillmor for the San Jose Mercury News.

The Bush administration’s hostility to our fundamental liberties is unrelenting. Not content with ramming the contemptibly named “USA Patriot Act” through a sadly compliant Congress in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the White House and its forces are lining up for another whack at the Bill of Rights.
Draft legislation from Attorney General John Ashcroft’s law-enforcement gnomes is making the rounds. It’s apparently being called the “Domestic Security Enhancement Act,” but think of it as “UnPatriot II.”
Read the draft on the Center for Public Integrity’s Web site. Then read the FindLaw Web site’s analysis by Anita Ramasastry, an assistant law professor at the University of Washington School of Law and associate director of the Shidler Center for Law, Commerce & Technology.
The legislation, Ramasastry warns, is “a wholesale assault on privacy, free speech and freedom of information.” She does not exaggerate.

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More On Ashcroft’s Unprecedented Deadly Actions

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Mr. Death
For the Berkshire Eagle.

Attorney General John Ashcroft has a thing about killing people. He has ordered U.S. attorneys in New York, Connecticut and Vermont to seek the death penalty for defendants in 13 cases where they had not been inclined to pursue it. The 13 cases in the Northeast represent nearly half the 28 cases where the attorney general has exercised his authority to order a death penalty prosecution. A Justice Department spokeswoman says the attorney general wants to make sure the federal death penalty statute is applied “in a consistent and fair manner across the country,” so that there is not “one standard in Georgia and another in Vermont.”
Mr. Ashcroft’s monomaniacal focus on the death penalty also threatens to undermine the effectiveness of federal prosecutors. In one Brooklyn case, Mr. Ashcroft rejected a plea bargain for a man who offered to cooperate with prosecutors against his co-defendants in a murder and drug trafficking case in return for a recommendation that his life be spared. The plea deal is a prosecutor’s most powerful tool for cracking a conspiracy — it turns a co-conspirator into a witness. In this case, defense lawyers had a signed agreement with a federal prosecutor, approved by his immediate superior, which was rejected by Mr. Ashcroft. Now they must go to trial without their star witness.
Mr. Ashcroft, a devout conservative, says he is for states’ rights but when it comes to the death penalty there is no more ardent federalist. “States do not have the option of opting out of federal death penalty law any more than they had the option of opting out of civil rights laws in the 1960s,” an unidentified senior Justice Department official told the Washington Post. Funny he should mention civil rights. Of the 23 people now on federal death row, 17, or 74 percent, are non-whites, a figure that exactly mirrors the percentage of non-whites among defendants approved for a capital prosecution since the federal death penalty took effect. Racial bias is one of many reasons the death penalty has fallen into disrepute nationwide.
John Ashcroft, however, doesn’t care about the bias and failings of the death penalty or what the people of New York or New England think. He doesn’t mind casting conservatism aside when it suits him. This man who swore to a Senate that foolishly confirmed him in his post that he would not let his personal prejudices influence his judgments has been carried away by blood lust.