James Slaughter is a customs officer who (in his own words) "bleeds red, white and blue." He's offended that five of his fellow ICE officers (again in his own words) "bullied their way into my house" to search for an illegal immigrant they believed he was harboring. It turned out that the immigrant was staying at a residence on East 26th Place, while Slaughter lives on East 26th Street. Oops.

Slaughter's complaint that his Fourth Amendment rights were violated (a complaint he lodged in a pending civil rights suit) seems to be based on his feeling that, as a true patriot, he was gravely wronged by ICE's error. In Slaughter's words: "I serve my country, and then they do this to me?"

Actually, Mr. Slaughter, you got off easy. When you said you were a Customs officer, your fellow ICE employees retreated. If you were a foreign resident with a green card, or Hispanic, or just about anyone else, the officers would likely have ignored your protests and continued their search until they eventually discovered their error. [more ...]

The Vermont legislature today overrode the Governor's veto of the law allowing same-sex marriage.

Vermont is now the first state in the U.S. to allow same-sex marriages through legislation.

The New York Times has more here.

Glenn Greenwald explains what candidate Obama promised:

When Obama sought to placate his angry supporters after he voted for the Bush/Cheney FISA-telecom immunity bill last June (after vowing the prior December to support a filibuster of any such legislation), this is what he said . . . :

[The FISA bill] also firmly re-establishes basic judicial oversight over all domestic surveillance in the future. It does, however, grant retroactive immunity, and I will work in the Senate to remove this provision so that we can seek full accountability for past offenses.

Glenn then explains what PRESIDENT Obama has done:

By now, everyone knows about the United States' torture policy. What we do not know expressly is who precisely was involved. We know that President Bush, Vice President Cheney, CIA Director Tenet, his deputy John Brennan (now an Obama NSC deputy), Yoo, Bybee and many others were involved. The details are important and need to be investigated of course, but the big push to not release three torture memos seems a strange place to draw the line. And yet it is being reported that Obama deputy John Brennan has cajoled CIA Director Leon Panetta to join him in opposing the release of these memos despite the approval of Attorney General Holder and now it is being reported that the Republican Senate caucus is threatening to go nuclear if the memos are released:

The Iowa Supreme Court has ruled a ban on gay marriage is unconstitutional.

The Iowa Supreme Court says the state's same-sex marriage ban violates the constitutional rights of gay and lesbian couples, making it the third state where gay marriage is legal.

In a unanimous ruling issued Friday, the court upheld a 2007 Polk County District Court judge's ruling that the law violated the state constitution.

How Appealing has more, including this link to the decision (pdf).

DNC Chair and VA. Gov. Tim Kaine may lose some support with his signing today of legislation approving "Choose Life" license plates in Virginia.

[H]is decision could echo among women's activists who are among the most powerful financial supporters of the party.

“It is surprising that Governor Kaine would do this, but it’s all the more surprising that he would do it as chair of the DNC,” said Paulette McElwain, the president of the Virginia League for Planned Parenthood.

Gov. Kaine also made this promise today: [More...]

Scott Lemieux writes about Will Saletan and his strange ruminations on the choice issue. After Saletan reasserts his pro-choice view, he then writes:

If you cause an unintended pregnancy and an abortion because you didn't want to wear a condom, you should be ashamed.

Lemieux writes "[Saletan] has argued that shaming people who get abortions is a good pro-choice tactic, which makes no sense at all." It really does not make sense. Suppose you actually believed that Saletan made sense with this shame thing. How precisely does he plan to enact this "policy of shame?" Is he planning on organizing a finger wagging group outside of abortion clinics? Will they stand next to the folks holding "Baby Killer" signs? More . . .

James Manship is a Catholic priest. He videotaped two police officers in East Haven, Connecticut as they removed license plates from the wall of a store owned by a Hispanic couple. Manship was trying to document the alleged harassment of Hispanics by the East Haven police. The officers took offense.

The officers said in their reports that Manship was holding an "unknown shiny silver object" and struggled with one of the officers who tried to take it from him. But a 15-second video released by Manship's attorneys earlier this month shows one of the officers, before the arrest, asking the pastor, "Is there a reason you have a camera on me?"

Manship was charged with disorderly conduct and interfering with the police. The video ends as the officer approach Manship, but Manship denies struggling with the officer. The discrepancy between the police report and the video apparently convinced prosecutors that they had a weak case. The charges have been dropped.

Meanwhile, parishoners in Manship's church have filed a civil rights complaint with the Justice Department. [more ...]

Amnesty International has released a new report , Jailed Without Justice (available here, pdf). Via Reuters:

On an average day, the rights group said, more than 30,000 immigrants are in detention facilities. That's triple the number that were in custody a decade ago, according to Amnesty's report "Jailed Without Justice: Immigration Detention in the USA."

"America should be outraged by the scale of human rights abuses occurring within its own borders," said Larry Cox, director of Amnesty International USA.

Does anyone remember Agent Orange? If this is what Janet Napolitano has in mind for Homeland Security, fasten your seat belts, it's going to be a wild and bumpy ride.

The U.S. Border Patrol plans to poison the plant life along a 1.1-mile stretch of the Rio Grande riverbank as soon as Wednesday to get rid of the hiding places used by smugglers, robbers and illegal immigrants.

If successful, the $2.1 million pilot project could later be duplicated along as many as 130 miles of river in the patrol’s Laredo Sector, as well as other parts of the U.S.-Mexico border.

Are they going to force Sheriff Joe Arpaio's inmates to do the planting? [More...]

See also Jeralyn. While the Obama Administration got the headline it wanted, "Obama Will Not Use "Enemy Combatant" label, that is really meaningless. How the Obama Administration will define "enemy combatants" is a little bit more important. There are a few potentially meaningful changes, see Lyle Denniston. But I think the important aspect of the Obama Administration detention policy is what standard of review is to be applied by courts in habeas (and other types of proceedings for person captured and held overseas) proceedings of Executive decisions to detain. At footnote 2 of its brief (PDF) to the court, the Obama Administration asserts:

Yesterday, the Supreme Court, with the consent of the Obama Administration, vacated the Fourth Circuit Al Marri decision and dismissed the appeal as moot. I personally think this was the correct legal result but I do agree with Glenn Greenwald that the Obama Administration should do more on this issue:

[t]here were numerous steps the Obama administration could have and should have taken to prevent a repeat of the Padilla travesty, including: (a) explicitly renouncing the Bush administration's view that the President possesses this radical power (the super-transparent Obama DOJ refuses to comment on its view in that regard even though Candidate Obama explicitly rejected a similar theory -- see Questions 5 and 10); and (b) urging the Supreme Court to resolve the question notwithstanding Al-Marri's indictment, as Al-Marri's lawyers requested, on the ground that it meets one of the judicially established exceptions to the "mootness" doctrine.

More . . .