The New York Times reports some members of Congress were briefed earlier this month on a Department of Justice proposal for new FBI guidelines that loosen surveillance restrictions and that a few Senators lodged objections.

The senators said the new guidelines would allow the F.B.I. to open an investigation of an American, conduct surveillance, pry into private records and take other investigative steps “without any basis for suspicion.”

The plan “might permit an innocent American to be subjected to such intrusive surveillance based in part on race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, or on protected First Amendment activities,” the letter said. It was signed by Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island.

Attorney General Michael Mukasey gave this unreassuring description of the plan: [More...]

Via the ACLU (link will be up here shortly):

In a brief filed late yesterday with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), the Bush administration asked that any review of the new warrantless surveillance law be kept secret and that the court refuse to accept legal briefs from anyone other than the Justice Department itself. The government is responding to a motion the American Civil Liberties Union filed earlier this month asking the FISC to ensure that any proceedings relating to the scope, meaning or constitutionality of the FISA Amendments Act (FAA) be open to the public to the extent possible.

As to the lack of transparency the Bush Administration is seeking, the ACLU says: [More...}

Use your website or social networking page to take a stand for human rights. Sign up to be a part of Amnesty International's day of protest tomorrow against internet censorship in China.

Stand up against Internet censorship in China by registering your page as part of the online the Day of Protest. On the 10 day countdown to the Beijing Olympics (July 30), we will demonstrate our solidarity with netizens in China and strengthen our call on major internet companies to uphold human rights through ‘occupying’ as many online spaces as possible.

More...

Meteor Blades:

The future is what matters. Another decade or two of allowing the maggots to hollow out the Constitution could make that already dicey future grim indeed. Avoiding it, if that is possible, means, first off, putting away the perfume and inhaling deeply of the stink. Doing so properly requires not the wussy, half-hearted, half-assed, wink-and-a-nod investigation that we’re all-too-familiar with, but a thorough, ruthless, hard-core, full-bore, no-questions-evaded probe that not only digs deep but also goes as far back as needed to get the whole picture, even if that means taking up where Frank Church left off 33 years ago.

What MB said. Read the whole thing. It matters.

Speaking for me only

Glenn Greenwald has a great post that highlights how the Bush Administration, and its Establishment enablers, Democrats, Republicans and the Media, have severely tarnished the idea of American Exceptionalism. Glenn comments on a WaPo piece by its Deputy Opinion Page Editor Jackson Diehl criticizing, in completely unironic tones, the failure of "the rule of law" in Russia:

How can a member of an Editorial Page which has endorsed some of the most grotesque abuses and violations of law within their own country -- and which continues to believe that those responsible should be protected and immunized -- possibly continue to parade around as some sort of crusaders for those principles when it comes to others? Who is the target audience that they think they are successfully fooling with that charade? What mental process allows a person like Jackson Diehl or Fred Hiatt to declare that their own Government is exempt from the rule of law and the most basic international norms yet still believe they are in a position to condemn other governments for insufficient regard for the rule of law and human rights?

Glenn is right of course, but this holds true for the entire Beltway Establishment and beyond, from Fred Hiatt to Cass Sunstein to Nancy Pelosi and yes, to Barack Obama. The abdication of any moral standing by the American Establishment in the past 8 years has been nothing short of shameful. No one in the Establishment has the standing to lecture anyone about anything. All the lawlessness, all the outrages and abuses, all in our name - the Establishment has gone along every step of the way. This is what American Exceptionalism means now. And all done in our names.

Speaking for me only

The immigration raid on Agriprocessors, the Postville, Iowa meatpacking plant is having greater repurcussions. Abhorrent labor conditions by the employer are coming to light.

in the aftermath of the arrests, labor investigators have reaped a bounty of new evidence from the testimony of illegal immigrants, teenagers and adults, who were caught in the raid. In formal declarations, immigrants have described pervasive labor violations at the plant, testimony that could result in criminal charges for Agriprocessors executives, labor law experts said.

Out of work and facing deportation proceedings, many of the immigrants say they now have nothing to lose in speaking up about the conditions in the plant.

More...

In 2002, Obama legal advisor Cass Sunstein wrote:

President Bush's choice stands on firm legal ground insofar as he seeks to use military commissions to try people who planned and participated in the September 11 attacks (and similar actions).

In 2006, the Supreme Court decided Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, where it stated:

Together, the UCMJ, the AUMF, and the DTA at most acknowledge a general Presidential authority to convene military commissions in circumstances where justified under the “Constitution and laws,” including the law of war. Absent a more specific congressional authorization, the task of this Court is, as it was in Quirin, to decide whether Hamdan’s military commission is so justified. . . The[] facts cast doubt on the legality of the charge and, hence, the commission; . . . the offense alleged must have been committed both in a theater of war and during, not before, the relevant conflict. But the deficiencies in the time and place allegations also underscore—indeed are symptomatic of—the most serious defect of this charge: The offense it alleges is not triable by law-of-war military commission.

More . . .

It's fun to look for your house, or maybe your car, or maybe you, on Google Street View. It's not so fun if the Google camera caught you walking out of a strip club, but still, streets are public property, and that's the chance you take when you exit onto a public sidewalk.

Google crossed the privacy line, though, when it trespassed on private property in rural Sonoma County.

Up a single-lane road outside Freestone, Google went past a gate with a "no trespassing" sign and captured images on private property. Several residences can be seen on the property, including an up-close shot of someone's living room window.

This isn't the first time Google has treated private property as if it were a public street. Google was sued for taking pictures along a private road in Pittsburgh. What's next? Pictures of nude sunbathers on private beaches? [more ...]

(Parts 1 and 2.)

What does Obama legal advisor Cass Sunstein think about this idea

The proposal for a Church Committee-style investigation emerged from talks between civil liberties advocates and aides to Democratic leaders in Congress, according to sources involved. . . . Looking forward to 2009, when both Congress and the White House may well be controlled by Democrats, the idea is to have Congress appoint an investigative body to discover the full extent of what the Bush White House did in the war on terror to undermine the Constitution and U.S. and international laws. The goal would be to implement government reforms aimed at preventing future abuses -- and perhaps to bring accountability for wrongdoing by Bush officials.

Given that he endorsed the Bush Administration's lawlessness, I feel confident that he will oppose this idea. It is another reason why Cass Sunstein should have no place in an Obama Administration and should never be referred to as a progressive legal scholar. He has a long history of endorsing the extreme right wing legal views of the Bush Administration on executive power.

Speaking for me only

We have 12 million people living in this country without proper documentation, many of whom work, have families and pay taxes.

While Congress stalls year after year on providing a path to citizenship for them, and the radical right says there is no room for them, the Bush Administration has no problem playing favorites:

The American Embassy in Baghdad announced Thursday that it had expanded tenfold its program to help Iraqi employees of the American government here, who faced threats for their work, to obtain visas and ultimately citizenship in the United States.

Why should the Iraqis get special treatment? Because they provided aid to the U.S. in its unneccessary preemptive war that we entered under false pretenses?[More...]

Glenn Greenwald picks up and expands on my post on Cass Sunstein and egregious crimes, adding some very important information and analysis. Greenwald writes:

Jane [Hamsher] also asked [Bruce] Fein about Obama adviser Cass Sunstein's recent statements that Bush officials should not be prosecuted for their illegal detention, interrogation and spying programs. To get a sense for why this matters, National Journal this morning listed Sunstein as one of a small handful of likely Supreme Court appointees in an Obama administration. But -- similar to Fein's point regarding Jay Rockefeller, Jane Harman and comrades -- Sunstein has long been one of the most vocal enablers of Bush radicalism and lawlessness, having continuously offered himself up over the last seven years to play the legal version of the TNR role of "even-liberal-Cass-Sunstein-agrees-with-Bush."

More . . .

L.A. Police Chief Bill Bratton and his wife Rikki Klieman (former Court TV anchor and a good friend of mine) have pulled out their checkbook and donated to the group fighting the effort to ban gay marriage on the November ballot in California.

"The Constitution guarantees life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," Bratton said this week. "I see no reason why gays can't pursue happiness through marriage."

The donation came about when their friends, celebrity publicist Howard Bragman and his longtime partner, Chuck O'Donnell, told them they were getting married. Bill and Rikki asked what they'd like as a gift.

Bragman was direct: No gifts -- instead, make a donation to Equality California to help stop Prop. 8. And please make it public.

All of TalkLeft's coverage of Bill Bratton is assembled here. In 2002, I attended his swearing in ceremony in L.A. and wrote this lengthy report.