Civil Liberties

Jeremy Hall, an atheist soldier stationed in Iraq, attempted to form a meeting of his fellow atheists, after receiving permission to do so from an Army chaplain. That meeting occurred on August 7, and was attended by Hall’s supervisor, Major Freddy J. Welborn, 44, an evangelical Christian who broke up the meeting and threatened to charge Hall with violations of the Uniform Code of Military Justice as well as to block Hall’s reenlistment if the group continued to meet. Hall filed a lawsuit against the Pentagon and Welborn for injunctive relief to prevent such unconstitutional abuses. In response to his lawsuit, Hall has been assaulted by fellow soldiers and threatened on blogs with being killed by friendly fire. (There have been some allegations, not substantiated to my knowledge, that Pat Tillman’s death by friendly fire may have been the result of his outspoken atheism.) Welborn, who was initially misidentified in the lawsuit as Paul Welbourne, was tracked down via his MySpace page, a visual monstrosity which says that he is a member of the “Department of Eternal Affairs,” his primary occupation is “Bible Study,” he has a Bachelor’s Degree from Tennessee Temple University with a major in “Pers. Evangelism” and minor in “Biblical Worldview,” and he attended Tara High School from 1976 to 1983. (In fairness to Welborn, the heading says that the school information is for “MAJ Freddy & HIS Girl,” so the dates probably include “his girl”’s high school career along with his own, rather than indicating that he took seven years to get through high school.) The U.S. military has had a serious problem with Christian evangelicals who don’t understand what freedom of religion means. Earlier this year, the Pentagon Inspector General’s office issued a report that officers who appeared in uniform in a recruiting video for Christian Embassy, a group that promotes Bible studies by senior government officials, violated military rules by doing so. Two years ago, evangelical Christians proselytizing at the Air Force Academy led to a review of the Air Force rule for chaplains which says that there can be no proselytizing those of other religious faiths, but it’s perfectly acceptable to proselytize to “those who are not affiliated." A lawsuit against this evangelizing was thrown out of court last year, but the rule for chaplains with the double standard was revoked. More on the Hall and Christian Embassy cases may be found at the Questionable Authority blog, as well as the links in this post. UPDATE (March 7, 2008): Hall has updated his complaint to include a charge that he has had a promotion blocked because of his unwillingness to “put aside his personal convictions and pray with the troops." UPDATE (July 10, 2008): The government has filed a motion to dismiss (at the last available moment to do so), arguing that Hall lacks standing to sue and did not take advantage of all available remedies within the military to pursue his complaint before suing. UPDATE (April 26, 2008): The New York Times has now covered this story. (About time!) UPDATE (April 28, 2008): Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars asks the question of why Hall had to be transferred out of Iraq for his own safety, rather than the commanding officers telling the troops to leave him alone or be punished. UPDATE (October 18, 2008): Hall has withdrawn his lawsuit on the grounds that he will soon be out of the military and suspects the case will be dismissed for lack of standing once he’s out. A second case filed by Dustin Chalker will continue.

“Give me Liberty, or give me Death!" –Patrick Henry, March 23, 1775 “Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." –Richard Jackson, motto on title page of An Historical Review of the Constitution and Government of Pennsylvania, 1759 (often attributed to its publisher, Benjamin Franklin) “And I hear from time to time people say, hey, wait a second. We have civil liberties we have to worry about. But don’t forget, the most important civil liberty I expect from my government is my right to be kept alive, and that’s what we’re going to have to do." –Mitt Romney, Republican presidential candidate debate, September 5, 2007 (Also see the Reason blog on “Civil Liberties Check-Up.") ...

I just saw Naomi Wolf on The Colbert Report (Wednesday night’s show), discussing her new book, The End of America: A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot. She only had time to list a few of the ten steps on her list, but I found all ten in an article from the Guardian: 1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy 2. Create a gulag 3. Develop a thug caste 4. Set up an internal surveillance system 5. Harass citizens’ groups 6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release 7. Target key individuals 8. Control the press 9. Dissent equals treason 10. Suspend the rule of law ...

Boston authorities have filed another set of bogus “hoax device” charges, against Star Simpson, a 19-year-old MIT student who was wearing a sweatshirt with a homemade electronic nametag stuck to the front of it. The device was made of a breadboard with LEDs and a 9V battery, and Simpson was also holding “a lump of putty” in her hands, as she was waiting at Logan airport for a friend’s flight to arrive. She explained that she made the device for career day because she wanted to stand out. She was released on $750 bail and will have to appear in court on October 29 on charges of “possessing a hoax device." The Boston Globe’s article says: ...

It’s becoming a problem for newly popular British bands to tour in the United States, because they are being denied P-1 visas unless they can prove that they have been “internationally recognized” for a “sustained and substantial” amount of time. Recently the band New Model Army, which has actually been around for decades, were denied visas to perform in San Francisco at the DNA Lounge.

Payne Junior High School in Chandler, Arizona has suspended the 13-year-old son of Ben and Paula Mosteller for three days (reduced from five) for drawing a picture of a gun, an action which they characterized as a threat which they compared to the Columbine High School massacre in a discussion with his parents. The Arizona Republic reports that “The school did not contact police and did not provide counseling or an evaluate the boy to determine if he intended the drawing as a threat,” which suggests to me that they did not really consider it to be a threat. The boy’s parents described the picture as a harmless doodle of a fake laser, which did not show blood, bullets, injuries, or target any human. If the school really considered it a threat of an impending massacre, they should have treated it as one. Since they didn’t, why is it even worth a suspension? Is there more to the context that we aren’t being told, or are school administrators so irrational that they fear drawings of guns? Are there any adult males who didn’t draw guns along with cars, motorcycles, spaceships, monsters, aliens, and floor plans of secret hideouts when they were around 13? ...

Julian Sanchez points out the staggering misrepresentation by those arguing that the recent increase in wiretapping power amounts to nothing more than an update of FISA procedures to reflect current technology. (Hat tip to Tim Lee at the Technology Liberation Front.)

Jane Mayer has a story in the August 13, 2007 issue of The New Yorker which describes practices in the CIA’s secret prisons, whose existence was recently admitted by the president. Some excerpts: [Khalid Sheikh] Mohammed’s interrogation was part of a secret C.I.A. program, initiated after September 11th, in which terrorist suspects such as Mohammed were detained in “black sites”—secret prisons outside the United States—and subjected to unusually harsh treatment. The program was effectively suspended last fall, when President Bush announced that he was emptying the C.I.A.’s prisons and transferring the detainees to military custody in Guantánamo. This move followed a Supreme Court ruling, Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, which found that all detainees—including those held by the C.I.A.—had to be treated in a manner consistent with the Geneva Conventions. These treaties, adopted in 1949, bar cruel treatment, degradation, and torture. In late July, the White House issued an executive order promising that the C.I.A. would adjust its methods in order to meet the Geneva standards. At the same time, Bush’s order pointedly did not disavow the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” that would likely be found illegal if used by officials inside the United States. The executive order means that the agency can once again hold foreign terror suspects indefinitely, and without charges, in black sites, without notifying their families or local authorities, or offering access to legal counsel. … The Bush Administration has gone to great lengths to keep secret the treatment of the hundred or so “high-value detainees” whom the C.I.A. has confined, at one point or another, since September 11th. The program has been extraordinarily “compartmentalized,” in the nomenclature of the intelligence world. By design, there has been virtually no access for outsiders to the C.I.A.’s prisoners. The utter isolation of these detainees has been described as essential to America’s national security. The Justice Department argued this point explicitly last November, in the case of a Baltimore-area resident named Majid Khan, who was held for more than three years by the C.I.A. Khan, the government said, had to be prohibited from access to a lawyer specifically because he might describe the “alternative interrogation methods” that the agency had used when questioning him. These methods amounted to a state secret, the government argued, and disclosure of them could “reasonably be expected to cause extremely grave damage.” (The case has not yet been decided.) … Finally, last year, Red Cross officials were allowed to interview fifteen detainees, after they had been transferred to Guantánamo. One of the prisoners was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. What the Red Cross learned has been kept from the public. The committee believes that its continued access to prisoners worldwide is contingent upon confidentiality, and therefore it addresses violations privately with the authorities directly responsible for prisoner treatment and detention. For this reason, Simon Schorno, a Red Cross spokesman in Washington, said, “The I.C.R.C. does not comment on its findings publicly. Its work is confidential.”The public-affairs office at the C.I.A. and officials at the congressional intelligence-oversight committees would not even acknowledge the existence of the report. Among the few people who are believed to have seen it are Condoleezza Rice, now the Secretary of State; Stephen Hadley, the national-security adviser; John Bellinger III, the Secretary of State’s legal adviser; Hayden; and John Rizzo, the agency’s acting general counsel. Some members of the Senate and House intelligence-oversight committees are also believed to have had limited access to the report. ...

Both houses of Congress have passed a bill that updates the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to allow warrantless wiretapping when at least one party is a foreigner, without any requirement that the foreigner be suspected of having connections to terrorists. Wiretaps in such cases do not require approval of the FISA court, only of the attorney general and the director of national intelligence. As Tim Lee at Technology Liberation Front observes: So let me get this straight: the White House says “we think we should be able to eavesdrop on virtually any domestic-to-foreign phone call without court oversight, based on the say-so of one of the president’s subordinates.” And the Democrats response was “Hell no! Warrantless spying should require the say-so of two of the president’s subordinates!”Arizona’s Congressmen voted along party lines except for Harry Mitchell, who sided with the Republicans in favor of the bill, which provides for this expansion of powers for the next six months. (UPDATE, August 8, 2007: Actually, McCain didn’t vote on this bill at all, it’s another of his no-shows.) Kudos to Pastor, Grijalva, and Giffords for voting against this. (Hat tip to Technology Liberation Front and Stranger Fruit.) UPDATE (August 7, 2007): Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars has more on how this bill has gutted any oversight of what the Executive branch is doing. ...

The New York Times editorialized that vice president Dick Cheney was the person who sent then White House counsel Alberto Gonzales and chief of staff Andrew Card to the hospital bedside of Attorney General John Ashcroft to try to get him to reauthorize the warrantless wiretapping program that the acting Attorney General James Comey and many Department of Justice staff (including Comey and FBI Director Robert Mueller) threatened to resign over. Larry King asked Cheney about it, and his response is that he had no recollection of such an event, and besides, he didn’t read the New York Times editorial. Sounds like a lie to me, and Larry King seems to suggest he thinks so as well. Talking Points Memo thinks they’ve identified a Cheney “tell." (And no, it’s not just that his lips are moving…)