Research & Rescue

Supreme Court upholds anti-terror law

The Supreme Court on Monday upheld a federal law that forbids providing training and advice to terrorist organizations even about entirely peaceful and legal activities, saying it does not violate the free speech rights of those who want to help.

The court ruled 6 to 3 that Congress and the executive branch had legitimate reasons for barring "material support" to foreign organizations deemed to be terrorists in the USA Patriot Act.

via www.washingtonpost.com

Best comment of the day

In response to Alternet's posting of a headline on Facebook:

Headline: Should Gonzo Porn Be Regulated By the Feds? | | AlterNet

Comment: Muppets should NOT be used in pornography. Ever.

Colombia: Uribe Lashes Out at Sentence for Senior Officer

BOGOTA, Jun 11, 2010 (IPS) - Surrounded by a protective phalanx of stern generals and police chiefs, Colombian President Álvaro Uribe assailed a court ruling that sentenced a senior army officer for human rights crimes committed nearly 25 years ago.

In his Thursday night televised message, the right-wing president also announced "new legislation," among other measures, to provide the military with legal protection. Earlier, he had stated that "human rights cannot be invoked to commit abuses against the security forces."

On Wednesday, retired colonel Alfonso Plazas was sentenced to 30 years in prison for the disappearance of 11 people in November 1985, when he led a military assault on the Palace of Justice after it was occupied by the leftist April 19 Movement (M-19) guerrilla group.

Retired military officers slammed the conviction of Plazas as "legal and political warfare" driven by "national and international terrorism."

They also demanded that all cases in which members of the military are implicated fall under the jurisdiction of the military courts.

In 1997, the Constitutional Court ruled that cases involving members of the security forces accused of human rights abuses were to be investigated by the civilian justice system.

Read the rest at www.ipsnews.net

Federal Judge Rules Against Religious Right Charter School

In a major defeat for the Religious Right, a federal court in Idaho has ruled that public charter schools have no constitutional right to use the Bible as part of their curriculum.

U.S. District Judge Edward Lodge held Monday that state education officials, not the Nampa Classical Academy, get to set the curriculum for public schools in the state. And state officials, Lodge continued, were right to exclude religious texts from the classroom out of respect for the separation of church and state.

Read the whole article at blog.au.org

To the mountaintop, indeed

Jesus wept.

This is the second time in a week that I have seen a public figure invoke of the image of Martin Luther King, Jr. for the purposes of furthering a right-wing agenda that would have simply horrified the man. it certainly horrifies me. The first time I noticed this sort of statement was in the Anderson Cooper interview Tom Horne about the recent Arizona banning of ethnic studies classes. He maintains that we should have, essentially, social studies but that they should not be taught by members of that ethnicity to members of that ethnicity. He fails to realize that in order to specialize enough to even teach the subject, those teachers would ideally have received college degrees in that subject. He also fails to realize that there is no prerequisite of being, say, Asian American to take Asian American studies and there never was. While trying to argue that we don't have a problem if we don't separate coursework on separate cultures, Horne points out that he was on the Mall at Martin Luther King Jr's I Have a Dream speech. Perhaps he was there but he certainly missed the point.

And then there's Glenn Beck (hat tip Barb Wold of Democracy for New Mexico for the video pointer):

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Glenn to the Mountaintop
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Fox News

Imagine Beck's lunatic rantings had Martin Luther King Jr. said the following today, instead of in 1967:

These are revolutionary times. All over the globe men are revolting against old systems of exploitation and oppression, and out of the wounds of a frail world new systems of justice and equality are being born. The shirtless and barefoot people of the land are rising up as never before. The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light. We in the West must support these revolution

It is a sad fact that because of comfort, complacency, a morbid fear of communism, and our proneness to adjust to injustice, the Western nations that initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world have now become the arch anti-revolutionaries. This has driven many to feel that only Marxism has a revolutionary spirit. Therefore, communism is a judgement against our failure to make democracy real and follow through on the revolutions that we initiated. Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism. With this powerful commitment we shall boldly challenge the status quo and unjust mores, and thereby speed the day when "every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low; [Audience:] (Yes) the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain."

A genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies.

From Martin Luther King Speeches - Beyond Vietnam - MLK Online

Would Tom Horne let this man teach in the Tucson Consolidated District? Not likely. More likely, both he and Glenn Beck would have been calling him a communist and many in the right wing did in the 60s. 

Calling into their context the "I Have a Dream" speech from 1963 and tossing aside everything MLK said over the next 5 years is reminiscent of their use of Leviticus to suppress the human rights of gay people, while thumbing their nose at same book's call to embrace the strangers in our land. Perhaps if these people had taken a few ethnic studies courses, they would have a little better grasp of history.

ACLU - Facebook Revolt at Hand?

The ACLU has started a petition to convince Facebook to reign in it's privacy policies. If you like, you an access their online petition here: Facebook's Privacy Policy: Gain Control of Your Information. The petition page says tens of thousands have signed already. I also saw somewhere that there was a cancellation movement on May 31st. Is anyone reading this planning to pull out? I think I'd rather see things fixed than bail altogether but Im interested in hearing your views.

Yesterday, Facebook reportedly called an "all hands" meeting to discuss its privacy policies. That's because they are facing a brewing revolt among Facebook users alarmed by the company's, ahem, cavalier attitude toward protecting your privacy....

...At every step, we've worked to get word of these changes out, and pushed back, because at the ACLU, we believe Facebook users deserve control over their personal information.

Facebook's founder Mark Zuckerberg has claimed that "the default is social." But to Facebook, "social" seems to mean making your personal information public to the entire world.

Tens of thousands have signed an ACLU petition making clear that people need the ability to control who they share information with....

via www.aclu.org

Jon Stewart - Republicans as used car salesmen

Jon Stewart's take on the right's comparison of the Kagan nomination (as well as other events since Obama took office) to the failures of the Bush administration:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Release the Kagan
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

Not All States Target Immigrants

A bit of positive trending for immigrants:

Despite the commotion around Arizona’s SB 1070, a recent report shows that more laws expanding immigrants’ rights are being enacted than those contracting them. The Wilson Center’s study, Context Matters: Latino Immigrant Civic Engagement in Nine U.S. Cities, found that in 2007, 19 percent of 313 bills expanding immigrant rights were enacted and only 11 percent of 263 bills contracting rights were enacted by state legislatures. Washington, for example, passed SB 6403, which seeks to improve high school graduation rates by serving vulnerable youth, including recent immigrants. Andrew Selee

via immigrationimpact.com

Legal Documentation: Keep It Simple

I often invoke the phrase, "Educate yourself". Sometimes, however, wading through materials, especially legislative or legal documents is challenging, even for the best and the brightest. Wouldn't it be wonderful if the worst of the jargon were removed from documents that affect so many people?

Alan Siegel thinks legal documentation needs a redesign:

US Congress Extends Patriot Act without Privacy Improvements

What? Huh? "The White House's Democratic Allies"? I would submit that when 162 of your party votes to retain the provisions you campaigned against (and 5 others didn't vote), either you don't have many allies on your own side or none of you ever meant to repeal the privacy provisions.

WASHINGTON - US lawmakers voted to extend key parts of the Patriot Act law enacted after the September 11th attacks without adding privacy safeguards sought by the White House's Democratic allies.

The US House of Representatives, following the Senate, voted 315-97 to renew the counter-terrorism tools, sending the legislation to President Barack Obama to sign into law.

Read the rest at www.commondreams.org