Here’s another law that privileges religious beliefs by giving believers an opt-out from a generally applicable law, resulting in clear and obvious discrimination against non-believers. Margaret Doughty applied for US citizenship and was asked the standard question of whether she would be willing to take up arms to defend the country. Her reply:
Category Archive: Civil Liberties
Jun 18 2013
Lessig: NSA Revelations Won’t Change Anything
I have a lot of respect for Larry Lessig of Harvard Law School and I agree with him completely when he tells Bill Moyers that Edward Snowden’s fear that his leaks about the NSA’s illegal data mining won’t really change anything. He’s right, they won’t.
Jun 18 2013
Supreme Court Restricts Speech Again
On June 11, a federal district judge declared a law forbidding any protests on the grounds of the Supreme Court, overturning 40 U.S.C. § 6135. Two days later, the Supreme Court itself reasserted that same ban in a new regulation based on 40 U.S.C. § 6102, which says:
Jun 16 2013
Hannity’s Convenient Flip Flop on NSA Surveillance
Like Bill O’Reilly and many others, including many liberals unfortunately, Sean Hannity’s position on government surveillance has taken a mighty swing in the other direction now that Obama is in office instead of Bush. When Bush was in office, questioning NSA data mining makes one “weak on national security.” Now that Obama is in office, …
Jun 16 2013
Why Illegal Surveillance Matters
Chris Hayes has been doing an excellent job of examining the recent revelations about illegal government spying, including this segment explaining why history teaches that we should be very concerned about the abuses of government surveillance, especially when it’s done without serious checks and balances. He makes many of the same points I’ve made about …
Jun 15 2013
Obama vs Obama
Someone put together this video contrasting candidate Obama’s hammering of the Bush administration for giving us the false choice of either fighting terrorism or upholding the Constitution with his defense of illegal surveillance on the grounds that we can’t have 100% security and 100% privacy as well (as if either of those things could possibly …
Jun 15 2013
Friedersdorf: Stop Using Terrorism to Diminish Freedom, Privacy
Conor Friedersdorf expresses my own thoughts on the question of our obsessive focus on terrorism far better than I could. He points out that in the real world Americans have very little to fear from terrorists and far more to fear from other things that we would never use to justify such a massive growth …
Jun 14 2013
Court Upholds Free Speech at the Supreme Court Building
On Jan. 28, 2011, Harold Hodge Jr. stood on the Supreme Court plaza in Washington DC silently wearing a sandwich board that said “The U.S. Gov. Allows Police To Illegally Murder And Brutalize African Americans And Hispanic People.” He was promptly arrested because of a 60 year old law that prohibits any form of protesting …
Jun 14 2013
Seriously, Geoffrey Stone?
Goeffrey Stone is a law professor and former dean at the University of Chicago Law School, a generally well-respected one. But his reaction to Edward Snowden’s leaking of the details of the government’s illegal spying is breathtakingly ridiculous.
Jun 14 2013
And a Third Program is Revealed
In addition to the cell phone metadata seizures (not just Verizon but the other major cell companies too) and the PRISM program, it appears that a third program was also revealed in the original documents leaked by Edward Snowden, codenamed Blarney.
Jun 14 2013
Terrible Arguments in Defense of Government Spying
Andrew Sullivan has, much to my disappointment, reacted to the recent revelations of government spying with a yawn. And his readers are emailing him some absolutely terrible arguments about why they are unconcerned about it, particularly this inane argument comparing private companies to the government. Here’s one of his readers:
Jun 13 2013
Warrantless Surveillance and Partisan Hypocrisy
A new Pew survey shows exactly what I would have predicted, that one’s views on illegal government surveillance often changes significantly depending on whether you support the party in the White House. Overall, 56% said they’re okay with the government tracking all our phone calls in order to stop terrorism.
Jun 13 2013
Friedersdorf on Meaningless Oversight
One of the arguments being made by the Obama administration in defense of the newly revealed surveillance programs is that it’s all okay because elected members of Congress were briefed on it and are okay with it. Conor Friedersdorf points out why that claim is pretty meaningless, as is the idea of congressional oversight in …
Jun 13 2013
Keeping the Spying Revelations Separate
Benjamin Wittes and Robert Chesney, who know a great deal about national security law, have an article urging people to keep the two revelations of government spying last week distinct from one another. There’s the Verizon metadata seizures and there’s the PRISM program, which are different in very important ways. First, we simply are not …
Jun 12 2013
Did the Leaker Exaggerate the NSA Internet Spying Program?
Josh Constine at TechCrunch says that the Guardian, or their source, Edward Snowden, is exaggerating the access that the NSA has to the systems of Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Skype and other internet companies. Constine says that there is a separate, segregated system and requests still have to be made one by one.
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