“Just to clarify, for anyone – the FBI or whatever --who may be recording this conversation, we're not discussing illegal activity.”
– C&L Managing Editor Tina Dupuy

So I had this conference call thing with C&L head honcho John Amato and Tina Dupuy the other night. Tina introduced me to John as “the fake Koch brother.” She always does that, like I've done nothing else worthwhile in life except prank call Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker. One hit wonder. Chumbawamba. It hurts because it's true.

Anyway, John was musing on the possibility that his phone may have been tapped at one point. It was half joke, half liberal paranoia and, if my math is correct,100 percent possible. It happened to Antiwar.com; the Feds also spied on a raided peace activists in Chicago; it's not unheard of. It's how Patriots Act! This sort of 4th Amendment violation is one of the legacies of 9/11 – along with the illegal murder of hundreds of thousands. And bumper stickers.

The amount spent on Homeland “Security” is staggering – $75 billion a year according to the LA Times. $205,000 of that went toward a nine-ton Bearcat armored vehicle – complete with gun turret – to protect the Dreamworks Animation studio *. The terrorists hate us for our Kung Fu Pandas. And via creepy sounding programs like “If you see something, say something,” our ode to capitalist gluttony, the Mall of America, has transformed itself into a vigilant shopping gestapo, ready to detain any and all shoppers who happen to be too brown – er, um, suspicious.

Those are just a few examples of thousands, in which, under the guise of the Homeland Security, local police departments and security firms acquire the tools they need to do their jobs – because you definitely need a nine-ton armored vehicle to bust meth cooks. Haven't you seen Breaking Bad? Walter White will stop at nothing to protect his family. And you just can't trust that Pinkman kid.

The Military Industrial Complex now includes the Surveillance Industrial Complex, with cities installing cameras on every corner with federal grant money, and drones flying over the borders to protect us from yet more brown people. And in what appears to be the last wall in the American Panopticon, there's currently a bill in Congress called the “Protecting Children From Internet Pornographers Act of 2011.” Of course, we all want to protect kids from pedos, but the bill calls for your internet provider to record all your internet activity for an entire year. Yes, even your totally adult & consensual porn, the Asian midgets, the transsexual dominatrixes. The S! and the M. You just don't deserve privacy, you sick bastard.

It's with all this domestic spying, surveillance and domestic mission creep in mind that I'd like to talk about a disturbing trend: the arrest of citizens for recording police officers. If I knew what band the kids were listening to these days, I'd say it was as big as that...Chumbawamba?

One instance of a journalist being arrested for filming cops...let me think...oh yeah, ME! I know I'm a journalist because I've been condemned by the Society of Professional Journalists. And I know I was arrested because I was arrested.

But there are plenty of others under similar circumstances:

Continue reading »

Remember, James O'Keefe's partner on an abortion documentary stopped working with him. She said he edited the video in a misleading way to make it look like things happened that didn't. (Imagine that!)

Anyway, now he and his newest collaborator can explain to a federal judge why he broke Pennsylvania's wiretap laws:

The Philadelphia-office director of the anti-poverty group ACORN filed a civil lawsuit late Thursday in federal district court alleging that two conservative filmmakers violated state law when they recorded an interview with her without her consent and then disseminated it.

State law prohibits the intentional interception, disclosure or use of oral communications.

The lawsuit alleges James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles showed up at ACORN's Philadelphia office last July "on the pretext" they were there for housing and mortgage advice and interviewed director Katherine Conway-Russell in her office.

According to the lawsuit, O'Keefe and Giles met with Conway-Russell in an "attempt to entrap" ACORN workers into behaving inappropriately. Conway-Russell told O'Keefe and Giles that she could help them only with mortgage opportunities but not with other matters, the lawsuit said.

O'Keefe and Giles later disseminated the audio and video recording of the interview to "injure and harm" Conway-Russell, according to the lawsuit, which seeks unspecified damages.

David Rudovsky, Conway-Russell's attorney, declined comment on the lawsuit. Contacted on his cell phone, O'Keefe declined comment and didn't respond to a reporter's e-mail questions.

O'Keefe and Giles attracted national media attention last summer when, posing as a pimp and prostitute, they approached two female seasonal workers in ACORN's Baltimore office, made a secret video recording of the meeting, then posted it online.

(photo found here)

As more secret memos from the Bush Administration are revealed we find that it took only two weeks for the former president and his lawyers to plot the subversion of the Constitution and the rule of law:

The Justice Department released nine legal opinions showing that, following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the Bush administration determined that certain constitutional rights would not apply during the coming fight. Within two weeks, government lawyers were already discussing ways to wiretap U.S. conversations without warrants.

The legal memos written by the Bush administration's Office of Legal Counsel show a government grappling with how to wage war on terrorism in a fast-changing world. The conclusion, reiterated in page after page of documents, was that the president had broad authority to set aside constitutional rights.

The memos reflected a belief within the Bush administration that the president had broad powers that could not be checked by Congress or the courts. That stance, in one form or another, became the foundation for many policies: holding detainees at Guantanamo Bay, eavesdropping on U.S. citizens without warrants, using tough new CIA interrogation tactics and locking U.S. citizens in military brigs without charges. Read on...

We've known about the secret memos for years, but it still sent a shiver down my spine to actually read them. I applaud President Obama for making these memos public so that the citizens of the U.S. and the world can begin to understand what happened during those dark years in our history and to insure that never again will any president of any political party abuse their powers this way again.

To read all of the secret memos in their entirety click here.

Via Skimble, a most interesting theory:

I have yet to see this reported anywhere, but an anonymous commenter named trademonster on an investment forum said this (notice the dates):

01-09-06 06:49 AM

I've heard that SEC is going to shut down Madoff financial and all of their hedge funds for SEC violations. Can anyone confirm this?

And this:

01-14-06 02:52 PM

I actually got some update and found out that it's Spitzer's office doing the investigation not SEC. But I don't know what the scope of the investigation is.

Suddenly Spitzer's dalliances with a hooker don't seem quite as fundmentally important to the financial health of this country.

We need people who understand the system to police it. No matter how sanctimonious or egomaniacal you may find him, Spitzer understands the financial system. If these posts are true, somebody in power was more interested in the the details of Eliot Spitzer's transactions than Bernard L. Madoff's. They were obviously more interested in killing the watchdog than in catching the billionaire burglar.

And via Corrente, something even more interesting from Michael Isikoff's Newsweek story about the FISA whistleblower:

[Under the secret and illegal "Stellar Wind" program of domestic warrantless surveillance,] NSA was also able to access, for the first time, massive volumes of personal financial records—such as credit-card transactions, wire transfers and bank withdrawals—that were being reported to the Treasury Department by financial institutions. These included millions of "suspicious-activity reports," or SARS, according to two former Treasury officials who declined to be identified talking about sensitive programs. (It was one such report that tipped FBI agents to former New York governor Eliot Spitzer's use of prostitutes.) These records were fed into NSA supercomputers for the purpose of "data mining"—looking for links or patterns that might (or might not) suggest terrorist activity.

Lambert asks an important question: How did the suspicious activity report on Spitzer's financial transaction get from the NSA to the FBI?

He also notes the convenient timing, because Spitzer at the time was looking into the monoline insurance companies - another important piece of the Wall St. crash.

Was the Bush administration using illegally obtained information to take down political enemies? Oh, I think it's a safe bet. And do you suppose they were deliberately trying to keep Spitzer from exposing extensive Wall St. fraud?

What do you think?

(guest blogged by Logan Murphy)

It's a sign of the times.

Reuters -

More than 30 Vermont towns passed resolutions on Tuesday seeking to impeach President Bush, while at least 16 towns in the tiny New England state called on Washington to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq.

"We're putting impeachment on the table," said James Leas, a Vermont lawyer who helped to draft the resolutions and is tracking the votes. "The people in all these towns are voting to get this process started and bring the troops home now."

After casting votes on budgets and other routine items, citizens of 32 towns in Vermont backed a measure calling on the U.S. Congress to file articles of impeachment against Bush for misleading the nation on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and for engaging in illegal wiretapping, among other charges.

Read the rest of this article

On "THIS WEEK," Sen. Feingold told George Stephanopolous that he wants the Senate to admonish Bush for approving domestic wiretaps on American citizens without first seeking a legally required court order.

Download | play -WMP Download | play -QT MP3- Download | play -MP3 (David Edwards)

Stephanopoulos: Tomorrow in the Senate you'll introduce a resolution to censure George W. Bush. Let me show it to our viewers. It says, "Resolved: that the United States Senate does hereby censure George W. Bush, President of the United States, and does condemn his unlawful authorization of wiretaps of Americans." That is a big step-Why are you taking it now?

Feingold: It's an unusual step. It's a big step, but what the President did by consciously and intentionally violating the constitutional laws of this country with this illegal wiretapping has to be answered. There can be debate about whether the law should be changed. There can be debate about how best to fight terrorism. We all believe that there should be wiretapping in appropriate cases. But the idea that the president can just make up a law in violation of his oath of office has to be answered.

ABC News says:

"This conduct is right in the strike zone of the concept of high crimes and misdemeanors," said Feingold, D-Wis., a three-term senator and potential presidential contender.

He said President Bush had, "openly and almost thumbing his nose at the American people," continued the NSA domestic wiretap program. President Bush has long asserted that the so-called 'warrantless wiretaps' are an essential tool in the war on terror.

UPDATE: Raw Story has the full transcript posted now.

Alan Shore (James Spader) from Boston Legal gives one of those great monologues that we all wished would be said by somebody other than a great actor. In the episode "Stick it," Alan Shore's secretary, Melissa (Marisa Coughlan), is arrested for tax evasion, he takes on the case of this outspoken girl who says her late, patriotic grandfather would be proud of her for challenging the government.
Download | play -WMP Download | play - QT longer version 5 min (video appears to be a little choppy)

Download | play --MP3-new

Shore: At a presidential rally, parade or appearance. If you have on a supportive t-shirt you can be there. If you're wearing or carrying something in protest, you can be removed, This in the United States of America.- This in the United States of America! Is Melissa Hughes the only one embarrassed?

emailer CS: "James Spader's character gives such a fiery and passionate speech about the lies, mistruths and unethical behavior of this Administration that it made me jump from the couch and yell triumphantly at my TV. Covered everything from lies on WMD, to torture, Abu Ghirab, Guantanamo, and, most importantly, illegal wiretapping"