ACLU Releases First Concrete Evidence of FBI Spying Based Solely on Groups’ Anti-War Views

The American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Pennsylvania today released new evidence that the Federal Bureau of Investigation is conducting investigations into a political organizations based solely on its anti-war views.

Two documents released today reveal that the FBI investigated gatherings of the Thomas Merton Center for Peace & Justice just because the organization opposed the war in Iraq. Although previously disclosed documents show that the FBI is retaining files on anti-war groups, these documents are the first to show conclusively that the rationale for FBI targeting is the group’s opposition to the war. …

The FBI memo points out that the Merton Center “is a left-wing organization advocating, among many political causes, pacifism.” [mjh: Gasp! Oh, god, not pacifism!]

“All over the country we see the FBI monitoring and keeping files on Americans exercising their First Amendment rights to free expression,” said Mary Catherine Roper, a staff attorney with the ACLU of Pennsylvania. “These documents show that Americans are not safe from secret government surveillance, even when they are handing out flyers in the town square – an activity clearly protected by the Constitution.”

adn.com | environment : Oil spill is the North Slope’s biggest ever By RACHEL D’ORO, Associated Press Writer

More than 200,000 gallons of crude leaked from a ruptured transit line onto the tundra in Alaska’s Prudhoe Bay, making the spill discovered earlier this month the largest ever on the North Slope, according to an official estimate released Friday.

The estimated spill size of 202,000 to 267,000 gallons far surpasses the 38,000 gallons spilled in 2001, officials said. …

[I]t was not expected to be as large as the BP spill, said DEC spokesman John Dixon.

“I’d be surprised if it even exceeds 500 gallons,” he said. [mjh: Surprise!] …

To date, workers have recovered 52,920 gallons — or 1,260 barrels — of crude.

mjh’s blog

Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski:

But if Arctic oil development was going to harm the environment or wildlife, then I would agree opening it would not be worth the cost. But the vast majority of Alaskans, including Alaska’s Eskimos who know it best, support ANWR’s development because we know 21st-century technology guarantees the land’s protection.

ABQjournal: Wilson Record a Maverick Streak, Not GOP Buckin’ By Michael Coleman, Of the Journal

Those who oppose oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge have won some nail-biter victories in Congress in recent years, but Sen. Pete Domenici keeps demanding a rematch.

The New Mexico Republican and chairman of the Senate energy committee maneuvered again last week to open the refuge to oil companies by putting the measure in the federal budget. Domenici keeps using that tactic because the federal spending blueprint is immune to a filibuster….

Domenici told me late last week that America needs Alaska’s oil and he’s willing to take the political heat to get it.

“For those who can’t vote for it because of political reasons, that’s their prerogative,” Domenici said. “But I don’t want to let another opportunity pass on my watch.”

mjh’s blog — Oil and Gas Contributes $179.7 million – 74 percent to Republicans
The Money Behind the Debate Over Drilling in ANWR

Oil companies are hoping their considerable political clout, built up over years of generous campaign giving and lobbying, will put drilling in ANWR over the top. The oil and gas industry has contributed $179.7 million since 1989 to federal candidates and political parties, 74 percent to Republicans. … [mjh: Coincidence?]

Former top judge says US risks edging near to dictatorship by Julian Borger

Sandra Day O’Connor, a Republican-appointed judge who retired last month after 24 years on the supreme court, has said the US is in danger of edging towards dictatorship if the party’s rightwingers continue to attack the judiciary.

In a strongly worded speech at Georgetown University, reported by National Public Radio and the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin, Ms O’Connor took aim at Republican leaders whose repeated denunciations of the courts for alleged liberal bias could, she said, be contributing to a climate of violence against judges. …

She pointed to autocracies in the developing world and former Communist countries as lessons on where interference with the judiciary might lead. “It takes a lot of degeneration before a country falls into dictatorship, but we should avoid these ends by avoiding these beginnings.” …

[During the Schiavo affair,] DeLay later called for the impeachment of judges involved in the Schiavo case, and called for more scrutiny of “an arrogant, out-of-control, unaccountable judiciary that thumbed their nose at Congress and the president”.

Such threats, Ms O’Connor said, “pose a direct threat to our constitutional freedom”, and she told the lawyers in her audience: “I want you to tune your ears to these attacks … You have an obligation to speak up.

“Statutes and constitutions do not protect judicial independence – people do,” the retired supreme court justice said.

She noted death threats against judges were on the rise and added that the situation was not helped by a senior senator’s suggestion that there might be a connection between the violence against judges and the decisions they make.

The senator she was referring to was John Cornyn, a Bush loyalist from Texas….

Truth Detector: Dubai Waves Good-Bye, Hello Halliburton & Wal-Mart!

[mjh: More of the wit & wisdom of Lush Limbaugh, gas bag.]

They’re pulling out of there, saying, “Screw you! To hell with it.” Now, we’ve got an opportunity here, folks. You know me: I always try to look at events and say what is the opportunity. The opportunity is, all right, everybody wants an American company to run these ports. Take advantage of this, make a move. Get Halliburton in there today. Make a move, and ram this right down Chuck Schumer’s throat…

That company is Halliburton. Wal-Mart could do it, too. They’ve shown ability to manage and move large amounts of goods with security and a good health care program for the employees.

[mjh: In the midst of this, he vaguely accuses Bill Clinton of being involved in this, especially the 45 day waiting period. Yawn. Lush, Clinton isn’t president anymore. And Bob Dole was just as involved.]

Government subverts its own ideals By ALLAN M. JALON

Thirty-five years ago Wednesday, a group of anonymous activists broke into the small, two-person office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Media, Pa., and stole more than 1,000 FBI documents that revealed years of systematic wiretapping, infiltration and media manipulation designed to suppress dissent.

The Citizens’ Commission to Investigate the FBI, as the group called itself, forced its way in at night with a crowbar while much of the country was watching the Muhammad Ali-Joe Frazier fight. When agents arrived for work the next morning, they found the file cabinets virtually emptied.

[This break-in] remains one of the most lasting consequential (although underemphasized) watersheds of political awareness in recent American history, one that poses tough questions even today for our national leaders who argue that fighting foreign enemies requires the government to spy on its citizens. The break-in is far less well-known than Daniel Ellsberg’s leak of the Pentagon Papers three months later, but in my opinion it deserves equal stature.

Found among the Media documents was a new word, “COINTELPRO,” short for the FBI’s “secret counterintelligence program,” created to investigate and disrupt dissident political groups in the United States. Under these programs, beginning in 1956, the bureau worked to “enhance the paranoia endemic in these circles,” as one COINTELPRO memo put it, “to get the point across there is an FBI agent behind every mailbox.”

The Media documents — along with further revelations about COINTELPRO in the months and years that followed — made it clear that the bureau had gone beyond mere intelligence-gathering to discredit, destabilize and demoralize groups — many of them peaceful, legal civil rights organizations and anti-war groups — that the FBI and Director J. Edgar Hoover found offensive or threatening. …

The sheer reach of a completely politicized FBI was one of the most frightening revelations of the Media documents. … “Neutralize them in the same manner they are trying to destroy and neutralize the U.S.,” one memo said.