Randy Paul over at Beautiful Horizens has an interesting post, Back to Reality, on Human Rights Watch's recent report of an attempt by Ashcroft's Justice Department to effectively quash the Alien Torts Claim Act.

In a brief filed in John Doe I, et al. v. Unocal Corporation, et al., a case originally filed in 1996 and currently being reheard by the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, the Justice Department

...argued for a radical re-interpretation of the 1789 Alien Tort Claims Act (ATCA). For over 20 years, courts have held that the ATCA permits victims of serious violations of international law abroad to seek civil damages in U.S. courts against their alleged abusers who are found in the United States. The Justice Department would deny victims the right to sue under the ATCA for abuses committed abroad.

“This is a craven attempt to protect human rights abusers at the expense of victims,” said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. “The Bush administration is trying to overturn a longstanding judicial precedent that has been very important in the protection of human rights.”

The Justice Department is inflating terrorism charges according to the Deluth News.

Of the 56 terrorism cases filed by Justice in January and February, 2003, the agency concedes that 41 did not involve terrorism. The article has a host of examples of the non-terrorist cases. Here's one.

Meanwhile, in Detroit, the case of Hassan Nasrallah -- whose name is the same as that of the chief of the Lebanese group Hezbollah -- was, like the 55 others, labeled as terrorism.

His attorney, Mark Haidar, said he is charged with using six phony checks to pay his MasterCard bill.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Eric M. Straus, who is prosecuting the case, said last week: "He is not the leader of Hezbollah.... This is not a terrorist case." [hat tip to Matthew of Untelevised.Org]

Justice Antonin Scalia spoke at a conference in Alaska Friday. When asked about the Patriot Act, he responded,

Scalia said the more irresponsible and violent a society becomes, the more citizens' freedoms will be restricted. He said that U.S. citizens tend to interpret the Constitution as giving them more power than the document provides.

The shape of things to come?

It was an interesting day." - President Bush, recalling 9/11

This is a great account, published today by the Center for Cooperative Research, on Bush's movements on September 11.

Nat Hentoff charges Ashcroft with muzzling his prosecutors when it comes to speaking with members of Congress or their aides.

The Justice Department's Office of Legislative Affairs has, by order of the attorney general, instructed all members of the Justice Department to inform that office "ahead of time and as soon as possible" before they participate in any briefings on Capitol Hill or engage in "substantive conversations" with members of Congress or their staff on Capitol Hill.

Every Justice Department employee is to be tracked to make sure — said the directive — "that the Department speaks with one voice on Capitol Hill. ... Please let us know when you receive a phone call from, or plan to place a call, to House and Senate staff and members of Congress."

"Moreover," the memorandum adds, "in almost all cases ... we will accompany you to briefings." (In Iraq, before the war, this form of government supervision was exercised by "minders.")

Here is Republican Senator Charles Grassley's reaction:

Sen. Charles Grassley, Iowa Republican, called the directive "an attempt to muzzle whistleblowers," saying, on Fox News, that "we are all working for the American people to have maximum communication among the branches of government. This is an attempt to control information. We want to make sure that what we pass in Congress works the way we wanted it to, and that the money is spent the way we intended. We need a maximum flow of information to make the separation of powers work."

Grassley and Sen. Patrick Leahy are leading the charge to reject Ashcroft's secrecy and muzzling. Whistleblowers need protection and the FBI needs reform. Congress has to be allowed access to information detailing the Justice Department's use of its new and expanded powers. We have a right to know that these powers are being used as Congress intended when initially granting them--and that Ashcroft is not exceeding his rule-making authority.

Geov Parrish has an article in the Seattle Weekly on the import of revoking the attorney-client privilege in the Lynne Stewart case. This says it all, but read the whole thing.

Lynne Stewart is a guinea pig--a chance for the Bush administration to see how far it can push its evisceration of the Bill of Rights. The attack on attorney representation is only one of a staggering number of its post-9/11 assaults on the Constitution, but it's one of the most important. Invariably, the least sympathetic among us--the accused terrorists and the radical lawyers--are the first to lose basic rights. The rest of us follow.

Ashcroft is dictating that the Government can pry into the attorney-client privilege all it wants. While this is bad for lawyers, it's worse for clients. First comes the inch-- Lynne Stewart, then comes the mile--the rest of us.

On October 31, 2001, Attorney General John Ashcroft issued an emergency regulation, 66 Fed. Reg. 55062, allowing the monitoring of attorney-client conversations when the Attorney General has "reasonable suspicion" to "believe that a particular inmate may use communications with attorneys or their agents to further or facilitate acts of violence or terrorism." The order recognizes that these communications would "traditionally be covered by the attorney-client privilege." 28 C.F.R. § 501.3(d).

Here are the reasons why defense lawyers and others consider this regulation to be unconstitutional and ethically improper.

The Christian Science Monitor today reports on the laws of war and what the that Bush Administration has failed to do:

Exiled Iraqi lawyers say the US government failed to adopt - or even translate from Arabic - suggestions they provided in advance on how to prevent the kind of civil disorder, including looting and revenge killings, that has marred postwar Iraq. Weeks before the unrest erupted, the exiles proposed imposing martial law for 24 hours. The Pentagon also shelved a recommendation to recruit and vet Iraqi traffic police and security officers, who American soldiers did eventually turn to - but without checking their backgrounds.

The article reports there has been infighting between the State Department and the Department of Defense. The Guardian has more.

When individuals are charged with doing business with enemy states or listed terrorist groups, there are press conferences and press releases, evidence leaks, criminal charges, ruined reputations and more likely than not, jail time. When it happens to a corporation, the penalty turns out to be a slap on the wrist.

Why is it so different for US companies quietly caught trading with the enemy?

...Why are the government's cops so reluctant to tell us about the crooks they've captured? Who ever heard of a shy prosecutor, especially one who can show success in the war against terrorism?

When deranged American citizens are accused of working with terrorist groups like al-Qaida, Attorney General John Ashcroft holds a press conference and the FBI puts a new name and face on its Top 10 Most Wanted List, even though the allegations have not been proved in court. The suspects can languish in jail for months without any formal charges.

And when a Muslim charity is suspected of laundering funds for alleged terror groups, the Treasury Department shuts it down and freezes its assets.

But when multinational corporations like Wal-Mart, Dow Chemical, ExxonMobil and Amazon .com agree with government prosecutors that they have violated laws that prohibit doing business with enemy states, the news is buried on an obscure government Web site.

Why the secrecy? Why the protection from the public?

In the past two weeks, the Treasury's Office of Foreign Asset Control has revealed that 57 companies and organizations have been fined more than $1.35 million for civil violations of the sanctions laws.

Here is the transcript of 'A Chill Wind is Blowing in This Nation...' , the speech given by actor Tim Robbins to the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., on April 15, 2003. Read the whole thing, it's really good.

Immigration organizations are banding together in an effort to fight local police pursuits of immigrants , now being conducted as part of the terror war.

Taking on a job traditionally done by federal agents, a small number of police departments has begun arresting people accused of civil violations of immigration law, like overstaying visas, since the Justice Department announced its new interpretation of existing laws last year, officials say. Officials say the change was necessary to provide assistance to federal immigration officers and to remove criminals and potential terrorists from the streets. But the Justice Department has refused to release the documents on which it based its decision to advocacy groups, who say the decision violates the law and undermines confidence in local law enforcement.

A federal lawsuit against the Justice Department will be filed Monday by seven immigration advocacy groups, seeking to compel the Justice Department to turn over its records.

In 1996, the Justice Department's legal counsel decided that local police officers were precluded from tracking and arresting illegal immigrants. Such matters were to be handled by federal immigration officials. That decision was reiterated in a memorandum in November 2001.

In a letter to the National Immigration Forum last month, Attorney General John Ashcroft said his legal counsel had determined that immigrants who were deportable under immigration law and posed threats to national security could be arrested by local law enforcement.

Mr. Ashcroft said the names of such immigrants were being entered into the Federal Bureau of Investigation's database.

Police Chiefs in Texas, California, Florida and Colorado have opposed the policy saying that it threatens to undermine relations with immigrants and may make them less likely to report crimes.

The ACLU is filing the lawsuit on behalf of the seven groups. Bottom line: "There is no justification for secret lawmaking."

We're not shocked by Hatch's new attempt to repeal the sunset provisions of the Patriot Act, we expected as much from him, but it's still wrong. As Eric Muller at IsThatLegal points out:

The whole point of a sunset provision is to create a deadline by which Congress can assess how well the provision is working before renewing it or making it permanent. The Act has only been in effect for 18 months at this point -- 18 months, I might add, in which the Administration's general stance about its enforcement efforts has been rather secretive. How could anyone actually think that a year and a half under this Administration is long enough to make a judgment about the advisability of permanent and significant changes to the powers of law enforcement?

The ACLU has just fired off this letter to Sen. Durbin. More from the ACLU on this here. [link via Paper Chase]

Via GovExec.Com: Here comes TID (Terrorist Information Database)

The FBI is building a massive database to store case information, leads, intelligence and even newspaper and magazine articles related to terrorism.

Articles, the names of suspected terrorists on watch lists and terrorism-related message traffic from the Defense Department and the CIA have been placed into the database, which is being tested by some agents, according to Wilson Lowery, the FBI executive assistant director leading the project. Visa information from the State Department will be added to the database within 60 days, he said.

The database also would store information from state and local law enforcement agencies, records of telephone calls and terrorism-related information from the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and Defense agencies. It would also contain data from the 66 joint terrorism task forces at FBI field offices, as well as from the Foreign Terrorist Tracking Task Force, an interagency group formed by Attorney General John Ashcroft in October 2001 to keep known terrorists and suspects out of the United States and to track them if they do enter the country.

Reporters have already been briefed on the new system. Lowery acknowledged that security is an issue, and said one safeguard will be that "information would be collected according to guidelines established by the attorney general." That's supposed to make us less concerned about the civil liberties and privacy issues involved? If anything, it makes us worry more.

Update: Patriot Watch explains the danger in these databases.