How $100 million in cuts created chaos in Florida's mental hospitals. 10 Years Later, 9/11 Commission Says President Is Failing to Protect Civil Liberties. The 9/11 Commission released a 10-year report card on the recommendations they made back in 2004.
Obama's regressive record makes Nixon look like Che. Redditor Federal Reservations has made a handy post enumerating all the regressive, authoritarian, corporatist policies enacted by the Obama administration in its one-and-a-bit terms.
You know, for someone the right wing press likes to call a socialist, Obama sure makes Richard Nixon look like Che Guevara. And what's more, this is only a partial list, and excludes the parade of copyright horrors and bad Internet policy emanating from the White House, via Joe Biden's push for Six Strikes, the US Trade Rep's push for secret Internet censorship and surveillance treaties like TPP and ACTA and TAFTA; the DoJ's push to criminalize every Internet user by expanding the CFAA, and much, much more. Obama extends Patriot Act without reform - [1] Signs NDAA 2011 (and 2012, and 2013) - [2] Appeals the Federal Court decision that “indefinite detention” is unconstitutional - [3] Double-taps a 16-year-old American-born US citizen living in Yemen, weeks after the boy's father was killed.
There Are People Who Should Have to Plead for Mercy from a Judge—None Are Named Bradley Manning. Pfc.
Bradley Mannin and his civilian defense attorney, David Coombs, sit before a judge (Sketch by Clark Stoeckley) Renditions continue under Obama, despite due-process concerns. Google Fights U.S. National Security Probe Data Demand. Globalizing Torture: CIA Secret Detention and Extraordinary Rendition. Hide Download Files Download the 216-page report. 1.08 MB pdf Following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the Central Intelligence Agency embarked on a highly classified program of secret detention and extraordinary rendition of terrorist suspects.
FBI. TSA. OccupyArrests.com. The New Political Prisoners: Leakers, Hackers and Activists. Barrett Brown. Jeremy Hammond. Chelsea (nee Bradley) Manning. Frederick Douglass and Voter Fraud. Voting Law Changes in 2012. See our updated roundup of voting law changes in 2013.
The Government's Secret Plan to Shut Off Cellphones and the Internet, Explained. Photoillustration by Matt Connolly Update: The Electronic Privacy Information Center reports that the court just granted the government more time to decide whether to release the kill switch plan.
It now has until January 13. This month, the United States District Court for the District of Columbia ruled that the Department of Homeland Security must make its plan to shut off the internet and cellphone communications available to the American public. You, of course, may now be thinking: What plan?! Though President Barack Obama swiftly disapproved of ousted Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak turning off the internet in his country (to quell widespread civil disobedience) in 2011, the US government has the authority to do the same sort of thing, under a plan that was devised during the George W.
NSA. Whistleblowers. PATRIOT Act. Watchlist. US freezes Chicago Palestinian leader's bank accounts. The US government has frozen the bank accounts belonging to Hatem Abudayyeh, a Palestinian community organizer and director of a social service organization serving the Arab community in Chicago, and his wife, Naima.
Meanwhile, several members of Congress have written to the Obama administration to express their concerns about violations in civil liberties as a result of earlier government actions toward Abudayyeh and other activists. The real criminals in the Tarek Mehanna case. Guatemala Experiments: Syphilis Infections, Other Shocking Details Revealed About U.S. Medical Experiments. ATLANTA -- A presidential panel on Monday disclosed shocking new details of U.S. medical experiments done in Guatemala in the 1940s, including a decision to re-infect a dying woman in a syphilis study.
The Guatemala experiments are already considered one of the darker episodes of medical research in U.S. history, but panel members say the new information indicates that the researchers were unusually unethical, even when placed into the historical context of a different era. "The researchers put their own medical advancement first and human decency a far second," said Anita Allen, a member of the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues. From 1946-48, the U.S. Public Health Service and the Pan American Sanitary Bureau worked with several Guatemalan government agencies to do medical research – paid for by the U.S. government – that involved deliberately exposing people to sexually transmitted diseases. Dr. The Constitution Project. CDI - Center for Defense Information - Security Policy Research Organization -
To Host World Press Freedom Day in 2011. The United States is pleased to announce that it will host UNESCO’s World Press Freedom Day event in 2011, from May 1 - May 3 in Washington, D.C.
Hate Crime - Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) Groups Hail Obama's Order for Mass Atrocities Board - IPS ipsnews.net. WASHINGTON, Aug 4, 2011 (IPS) - Human rights groups here have welcomed Thursday's directive by President Barack Obama to create a new, high-level inter- agency mechanism designed to help prevent mass atrocities overseas before they occur. They also praised a second White House order barring the entry into the United States of persons "who organize or participate in war crimes, crimes against humanity, and serious violations of human rights". Know Your Rights: What To Do If You're Stopped By Police, Immigration Agents or the FBI.
US prisons/detention. Bill of Rights. Things we do to innocent people to prevent terrorism. Immigration. War on drugs. Civil forfeiture. USA & torture.