Via Boing Boing, CNN: Charles “Cully” Stimson, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs urges companies to boycott the law firms that represent detainees (suspected terrorists). If Stimson’s boycott proposal was put into practice, it would effectively prevent the detainees from obtaining good legal representation. Perhaps Stimson is using the [...]

At the security checkpoint, they usually tell you to remove your laptop from a bag and put it in a bin to be xrayed separately from the bag. And to take your shoes off, etc.
Yesterday they didn’t tell me to do that, and I’d forgotten about it, so I just sent my entire backback [...]

Recently I was behind a car on highway 237 that clearly belonged to an Objectivist. The license plate said “B IS B”, and there were two large bumper stickers with quotes from the book Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand.   One was John Galt’s creed:
I swear, by my life and my love of it, [...]

When I was a child, I was taught that the United States was a “free country.” That I could say anything I wanted, with only minor limitations (e.g., libel or inciting violence). That the people were protected by the Rule of Law, and had the right to Due Process and Habeas Corpus. [...]

Those of us that protested the so-called “PATRIOT” act were criticized as being “soft on terrorists”.  We’ve been told that the taking away of our civil liberties is just a temporary measure until the terrorist problem is solved.  And we’re told that the sweeping new powers that Congress has been giving the government will only [...]

S.3930, the Military Commissions Act of 2006, contains various sections legalizing past actions of the government, such as this section:
(2) RETROACTIVE APPLICABILITY- The amendments made by this subsection, except as specified in subsection (d)(2)(E) of section 2441 of title 18, United States Code, shall take effect as of November 26, 1997, [...]
The Constitution explicitly prohibits [...]

From the Congressional testimony of Patricia Dunn, former Chairman of the Board of Hewlett Packard, regarding the company’s use of fraudulent means to obtain the telephone records of reporters and fellow board members:
Committee Chairman Joe Barton (R-Texas):  “If I called you up, Ms. Dunn, and said ‘I’d like your phone records,’ would you give them [...]

The Ohio legislature now will allow judges to list people on a registry of sex offenders even if they’ve never been charged with a crime, much less convicted of one. They don’t even have to be accused in a civil suit.
A person listed in the registry can ask to be removed after six years. [...]

Their current state motto is “Live Free or Die”. But since recent court rulings in New Hampshire have eliminated the “Live Free” choice, it appears that dying is the only choice remaining to citizens of New Hampshire.
I’ve previously mentioned the Gannon case in Nashua, where police charged a man with violating the state wiretapping [...]

I’m not Islamic, so I never expected to take a position defending Islam. But several people have forwarded me email purporting to explain how “good Muslims” cannot be “good Americans”. This is such a distortion of American law and liberty that I can’t let it slide.
The quoted sections below are from the original [...]