Archive for the 'Civil Liberties'

President Obama, Sean Hannity and many others may be changing their position on the NSA’s data mining programs out of political necessity or partisan convenience, but Dick Cheney is not. In an interview with Chris Wallace, he said he’s just fine with what the NSA is doing: Read more

Guess who said in 2006, “If I know every single phone call you made, I’m able to determine every single person you talked to. I can get a pattern about your life that is very, very intrusive.” If you guessed Joe Biden, come on down. And he didn’t stop there: Read more

In the wake of the most recent revelations about NSA data mining, two groups have filed lawsuits against the federal government. One is the ACLU. The other is Freedom Watch, which is Larry Klayman with a P.O. Box. The ACLU is thinking strategically in their case: Read more

Retired U.S. District Judge Nancy Gertner, now a professor at Harvard Law School, is challenging the idea that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, set up under the FISA law to operate in secret to handle some cases involving national security, is much of a meaningful safeguard for our privacy or our liberty. She got up at a talk the other day and said: Read more

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: Read more