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The Progressive Political Blog for Colorado
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Denver Open Acupuncture
a sliding scale community acupuncture clinic
1345 East 22nd Avenue
Denver, CO 80205
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Jennifer Gross, L.Ac., M.Ac.O.M.
The nation's terrorist watch list has hit one million names, according to a tally maintained by the American Civil Liberties Union based upon the government's own reported numbers for the size of the list.
"Members of Congress, nuns, war heroes and other 'suspicious characters,' with names like Robert Johnson and Gary Smith, have become trapped in the Kafkaesque clutches of this list, with little hope of escape," said Caroline Fredrickson, director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office. "Congress needs to fix it, the Terrorist Screening Center needs to fix it, or the next president needs to fix it, but it has to be done soon."
With a million terrorists now lurking on the streets of America, a city the size of Denver should house roughly 2,000 of them. Even if the DNCC does not attract any terrorists from Greeley or Dillon, can the 1,400 sworn officers of the DPD hold off that many evil doers?
Nobody'll be surprised to hear that Sen. Jay Rockefeller, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, and co-conspirators are once again working their tails off to hand Bush cart blanche to spy on American citizens, immunize the telecoms for their illegal participation in same, and generally put our civil rights in the same league as those in Zimbabwe.
Regarding the telecoms, wasn't it Hoyer who signed a letter asking Bush not to pardon Scooter Libby because equal treatment under the law is so fundamentally important to our judicial system?
This time around, a coalition of Left & liberty-embracing Right blogs*, plus the ACLU, are working together on a joint project. Click the link at left for Glenn Greenwald's usual excellent explanation, but the short version is ads to target Steny Hoyer for his enabling of the legislation. You, too, can help. And it's already becoming a very big deal: nearly 2500 donors have raised about $140K since 1:30 p.m. this (Tuesday) afternoon. [correction -- Greenwald is saying $60k, so the ActBlue page I link to must have had a previous life. This means fewer than 2500 donors, too. Still, very impressive for less than 24 hours]
And based on everything I can read in this Denver Post article, they should be.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado on Wednesday sued the city of Denver, seeking disclosure of records related to the purchase of security equipment for the Democratic National Convention.
The city has twice denied ACLU requests for the documents under the Colorado Open Records Act, the lawsuit filed in Denver District Court states.
Mary Dulacki, records coordinator for the city's Department of Safety, has denied release of the records based on the grounds that disclosure "was contrary to the public interest" and because "it could potentially disclose tactical security information."
What kind of tactical security information could the city of Denver possible have for the DNC? Are they planning an assault? Are they going to secretly double-back and get people who show up caught in a cross fire of pepper spray, rubber bullets, and Taser shots?
Maybe it's 8 years of Bush-McCain Republicans using fear and the ever-present "security" threat to lie, cheat and steal that makes me a little reluctant to give the city of Denver any benefit of the doubt.
And since the city of Denver is spending my tax dollars to buy this "security equipment", I sure as hell have a right to know what it is!
Scarier even:
Silverstein said the lack of information has prompted rumors, such as whether the city had acquired a "sonic ray gun" for crowd control.
If Denver does not release the information the ACLU wants, how am I supposed to know if this isn't just a waste of money for a bunch of unneeded weapon porn.
CONTACT: Mark Silverstein, ACLU Legal Director, 303-777-5482 x114
Attorneys representing the City and County of Denver and the Secret Service, and ACLU of Colorado attorneys representing twelve advocacy organizations, filed documents late Thursday evening in federal district court indicating that they had reached agreement on some of the issues raised in an ACLU lawsuit filed May 1 that seeks to protect the right of free expression during the time of the Democratic National Convention in Denver in August, 2008.
The parties filed a document titled Stipulation Regarding Partial Resolution of Plaintiffs' First Motion for Preliminary Injunction ("Stipulation"). They also submitted a Proposed Order and jointly asked that the Court sign it and formally enter it as an order of the Court.
The Stipulation reflects the parties' agreement on some issues, thereby relieving the Court of the need to decide those issues in the lawsuit. It also reflects the parties' "agreement to disagree" on additional issues that remain to be resolved by the Court.
The points of agreement include the following:
* By June 12, Denver will announce the street-by-street route of a "Designated Parade Route" to the Pepsi Center, except for the location of the termination point of that route.
* Groups that conduct parades along the "Designated Parade Route" will not be charged any of the normally-applicable fees and will not be asked to reimburse Denver for any costs.
* The Plaintiffs preserve their opportunity to challenge the adequacy of that "Designated Parade Route." Plaintiffs also preserve their opportunity to argue for a prompt disclosure of the location and other details relating to the termination point of that route.
* The number of "slots" available for parades along the "Designated Parade Route" will depend on the size of the marches that are eventually approved for use of the route. As a result, the precise number of marches on each day won't be known immediately. However, Denver agrees that it will try, in good faith, to provide at least three time slots each day, and potentially more, depending on circumstances.
* Plaintiffs preserve the opportunity to challenge any restrictions on the number of available time slots on the Designated Parade Route, as well as any other restrictions on the conduct of parades or the availability of opportunities for parades.
* Denver will begin processing already-pending requests for parade permits on June 12 and will complete that processing by June 19.
* After the already-pending requests are processed, Denver will accept and process any new applications for parade permits, either for still-available slots on the Designated Parade Route, if any, or for other proposed routes locations in Denver.
* Denver has announced that it will establish a "Public Demonstration Zone" on the grounds of the Pepsi Center. The Stipulation states that this zone
"is not an isolated zone by which the City will confine demonstrations. This public area is simply a designated location that will provide sight and sound access to the convention delegates, and is open to demonstrators, delegates, curious onlookers and others."
* Almost all other details regarding the "Public Demonstration Zone" remain undisclosed at this time. The Plaintiffs preserve their opportunity to argue that those details must be disclosed promptly. Plaintiffs also preserve their opportunity to challenge any as-yet-undisclosed restrictions on First Amendment activity in connection with this "Public Demonstration Zone."
* The Stipulation acknowledges that the City's disclosures take certain pending issues "off the table," and the Court does not need to resolve them.
* The Stipulation also acknowledges a number of issues that remain unresolved. These issues remain the subject of the Plaintiffs' first motion for preliminary injunction. Thus, Plaintiffs continue to ask the Court for an order
o directing Denver to disclose promptly the termination point of the Designated Parade Route
o directing Denver to disclose promptly all restrictions that it will impose on activity within the Public Demonstration Zone, such as
+ the location and size of the zone
+ any restrictions on the number of persons allowed in the zone at one time
+ the locations of all entrances and exits
+ the nature, height, and transparency of any barriers that will interfere with or limit communication between persons inside the zone and delegates outside the zone
+ any restrictions on signs or banners within the zone
+ any additional regulations or restrictions on First Amendment activity within the zone;
o and directing Denver to disclose any plans to close or restrict access to any other public forum space as a result of the DNC.
The case, ACLU v. City and County of Denver, is assigned to Judge Marcia Krieger of the United States District Court for the District of Colorado. The day after the suit was filed, Judge Krieger ordered both Denver and the Secret Service to file a response within ten days. The Defendants later received a one-week extension. Their response is expected to be filed on May 23.
Lead counsel for the Plaintiffs are ACLU Cooperating Attorneys Steven D. Zansberg and Christopher Beall, of Levine Sullivan Koch & Schulz. Also representing the Plaintiffs are ACLU Legal Director Mark Silverstein and ACLU Staff Attorney Taylor Pendergrass.
Links to the recently filed documents, the original complaint, and other documents related to the lawsuit are available on the ACLU of Colorado web site at: http://www.aclu-co.org/docket/...
1. Clear lights represent the Light of Reason and represent our hope for one world free from superstition and prejudice.
2. Colored lights bring to mind stained glass windows and undermine the separation of church and state.
3. Clear lights recall pre-christian Yule festivities and advance the aims of inclusiveness and pluralism.
4. Colored lights are associated with the "family" and "church" aspects of the Winter Holiday making diverse populations feel excluded.
5. Clear lights represent the coming together of all the colors of the Rainbow just as white light is the merging of all colors of the visible spectrum.
6. Colored lights represent separation and discrimination just as a prism does violence to a ray of light by splitting it into unique colors.
7. Clear lights bring to mind secular Hollywood imagery, e.g., the pure, snowy world in "The Golden Compass."
8. Colored lights correspond to seasonal cues in many of the liturgical churches, e.g., red for pentecost, green for the season after epiphany.
9. Clear lights are an opportunity to tie the Winter Holiday to a symbolic narrative associated with secular, humanistic, and sacred-planet thinking.
10. Colored lights reinforce human bondage to discredited ideologies, subliminally draw people back to traditional modes of piety, and should, therefore, be eliminated.
Again to recap, were Gunny Bob's rantings about liberals actually true I would be serious about wanting his head on a pike. Instead I'd like to see his checkbook and that of his Clear Channel corporate masters on a pike.
Talking about YearlyKos just one month ago, Gunny had this to say:
"Gunny" Bob Newman on his August 2 broadcast called the 2007 YearlyKos Convention a "convention of hatred and intolerance," adding, "If you want to see hate, urged violence, bigotry, racism, and intolerance in general, and anti-American speech, this is the event." Newman then called the convention, organized by the Daily Kos blog, "bigger than any KKK, Nazi, or Muslim terrorist gathering ... that has ever occurred"
This morning I received the following email:
Thank you so much for taking time out of your busy day to email us with your concerns. We have already been made aware of our advertising being placed during the Gunny Bob show and we are addressing that.
While we are in strong support of freedom of speech, Gunny Bob doesn't reflect our view points. We are currently in the process of requesting
our advertising be removed from the Gunny Bob program and air during other KOA programs. Unfortunately it was a long weekend so the situation wasn't corrected as KOA's business offices were closed.
Please feel free to contact me if I can be of any further assistance.
Amy Johnson
Director of Marketing Spivack Vision Center
303.740.xxxx
I want to invite ALL of you to the HD37 meeting next Tuesday - our speaker will be Kathleen Hynes, Ph.D. from the Colorado ACLU to talk about the recent warrantless wiretapping bill and other "Patriot Act" issues - how these actions affect US - loyal US citizens!
The HD37 Meeting has a social hour from 6pm until 7pm. The speakers usually start at about 7pm. It is held at the CB & Potts near Arapahoe and I-25 (map). Email Patrick@ArapahoeDems.org if you have any questions.
Kathleen Hynes, PHD is a successful business owner, an astute researcher and a thoughtful and engaging professor. She has a proven record as an entrepreneur working in both the private and non-profit sectors and as a faculty member. Prior to starting her own research firm, she held a faculty appointment at the University of Colorado School of Medicine her duties included teaching medical ethics, developing and overseeing the evaluation components of multiple grants. Over the years, Dr. Hynes has served on her neighborhood board in several capacities, including president. She continues to donate her expertise to several diverse area non-profit organizations including Canine Partners of the Rockies, Inc., The Denver Jazz Club, ACLU, and the National Wildlife Federation.
Convention organizers want the event to be a living showcase of the Party's ideals. They got off to a good start today by opening an eco-friendly office in Denver's Civic Center Plaza, but the battle between citizen rights and security demands might pose a thorny problem.
Your reading assignment for the week is United States v. Wong Kim Ark, the 1898 United States Supreme Court decision that held that under the Fourteenth Amendment, the San Francisco-born child of two Chinese citizens was an American citizen by birth, notwithstanding the fact that the Chinese Exclusion Act made it illegal for "persons of the Chinese race, and especially Chinese laborers" from entering the country. Wong Kim Ark had been barred from re-entering the country after a visit to China. It's significant because one centerpiece of Tom Tancredo's "new" immigration platform is to strip citizenship from the U.S. born children of undocumented immigrants.
I learned about the Wong Kim Ark case courtesy of Rep. Terrance Carroll (D-Denver), who spoke about it at an ACLU event I attended a couple of months back. He walked through the whole history of attempts to deny citizenship to people of color, from the Dred Scott case through Wong Kim Ark through the current assault on birthright citizenship. (Interestingly, the dissent in Wong Kim Ark relied extensively on Dred Scott.) He also talked about how the denial of birthright citizenship has caused problems in Europe that the USA has avoided thanks to the Fourteenth Amendment. Rep. Carroll said he is working on an article on this subject, and I am really looking forward to reading it.
The other centerpiece of the Tancredo plan is to cut legal immigration by two thirds. Do you think this will stop the trolls from coming in and saying "Tancredo only opposes ILLEGAL immigration!!!1!"? Of course it won't, but those of us who pay attention to reality know that for Tancredo it has never been about legal vs. illegal, it has always been about fighting the "cult of multiculturalism."
It's easy to dismiss Tancredo as a fringe lunatic, but his crazy proposals have a way of getting mainstreamed in the poisonous racial atmosphere of Colorado politics. I'm just glad Terrance Carroll has already put in so much work showing how unconstitutional and wrong headed Tancredo's latest dose of "toughness" on immigration really is.
Update: Those who are interested in the Colorado ACLU speaker series should check out this link.
The erosion of our Constitutional Rights often occurs incrementally and under the radar. You may be amazed (or horrified) about how many civil rights and liberties you have actually lost. Many of the erosions of our rights have been buried in Executive Orders and Acts presented as positive social legislation. It is the Power and Prerogative of the People to defend and insist on saving and restoring our Constitutional Rights in a democracy.
We are talking about core American notions of justice in a democracy:
1st Amd Speech Rights
1st Amd Freedom of Religion
4th Amd Protection Against Unreasonable Search & Seizure
Due Process Right to be Advised of Charges
Right to Speedy trial by Peers
Right to Counsel in Criminal Charges
Privacy Rights from Government Intrusion
8th Amd Prohibition Against Cruel & Unusual Punishment
For these reasons I am posting an announcement I received below that may be of interest to those of you (from either or no party) interested in your Constitutional Rights.
"We should all be real proud of ourselves," said Jack Cafferty about the endless corruptions of the George Bush presidency on CNN in a recent premiere called "Broken Government."
Today American citizens are fighting their fears against the continued length on the war in Iraq, the NSA domestic spying program, government spying on citizens personal financial and telephone records, government prisoner abuse and torture, secret prisons in Eastern Europe, governmental holding of prisoners indefinitely without a hearing and many more unspecified upsetting federal actions.
"The Bush administration is clear. Be afraid. Be very afraid," said CNN.
The dramatic sweep of Democratic success on the 2006 mid-term election has proven that fear and fear mongering is just not working the way it used to these days.
But that hasn't always been the case.
According a 2001 report from Canadian University of Alberta's Express News after 9/11, "Anthrax causes more fear than death."
In 1938 Orson Welles radio show based on H.G. Wells "War of the Worlds" caused a surprising outbreak of panic in the U.S. Some listeners of the radio show panicked and actually believed that the earth was being invaded by warriors from Mars. Reports of a gas attack spread in New Jersey. Panic evacuations were reported in New York.
We live in a time full of shared fear. Fear of terrorists. Fear of governments. Fear of conspiracies. Fear of corruptions.
White House strategy has gone from "Let's rescue America from weapons of mass destruction" to "Let's find Saddam Hussein", to "Let's convict Saddam Hussein", to "Let's establish democracy in Iraq" to "Let's stay the course", to what Suzanne Malveaux of CNN aptly said right before the 2006 mid-term elections, "Let's mend the course."
"Without popular fear, no government could endure more than twenty-four hours," says Robert Higgs of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, a 250 academic faculty-supported classical/libertarian bent organization.
Even the second president of the U.S. hit the nail on the head.
"It is weakness rather than wickedness which renders men unfit to be trusted with unlimited power," said John Adams over one hundred years ago in 1788.
There seems to be a lot to fear these days inside the U.S.
As U.S. Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales pushed for increased public surveillance through the country's NSA programs, Gonzales continued to endorse "warrant less" surveillance and wiretapping in U.S. domestic spying programs during his law school lectures as late as Jan. 2006.
"President Bush may believe he can authorize spying on Americans without judicial or congressional approval, but this program is illegal, and we intend to put a stop to it," ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero as the ACLU began legal suit in January against the NSA and Lt. Gen. Keith Alexander.
In addition to the ACLU press on the NSA the EFF, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, has brought a class action suit against communications giant AT&T. This suit also began in Jan. 2006. Ongoing appeals are still currently in process with U.S. Supreme Court to take up the serious matter of AT&T's wedding with the NSA with customer surveillance.
As a Republican Congress passed the Electronic Surveillance Modernization Act on a 232 to 191 vote in late Sept. some American voters were taking notice. At the same time issues of privacy, government strong arm tactics and ever increasing troubles of U.S. policies with the war in Iraq were grating in a very negative way on voter confidence in the pre-election Republican stronghold.
The dramatic Democratic party sweep in the 2006 mid-term election sent Capitol Hill a clear message: "Government strategies and policies must change."
Perhaps John Adams in 1788 had a window into the future and the "fear" strategies that have been coming from Capitol Hill for too many years now.
_________________________________
Sources for this article include Fox News, Seeds of Truth, The Washington Post, CNN, ACLU, The Ludwig von Mises Institute, Official Site of the United States Senate, The Guardian Unlimited and University of Alberta Express News.
_____________________________________
There is an event added to the calendar that I want to mention.
The ACLU is hosting a town hall to discuss Big Brother, Bush, and the NSA.
You are invited to show up and speak. Spaces are limited (65 left at this moment) so they recommend you RSVP.
If they are filled up, there is a webcast you can still participate in, and if they are filled up and you are Tovah Dancer, I have an extra ticket.
Dottie Lamm is moderating a panel that includes:
Anthony D. Romero, ACLU Executive Director Bruce Fein, former Deputy Attorney General in the Reagan administration Gary Hart, former Senator (D-CO) and presidential candidate Mark Silverstein, ACLU of Colorado Legal Director
I am told there will be wi-fi available for anyone who wants to live blog it.
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