The Peoples’ Records

The Department of Justice has released a study of public corruption in the United States. Our state came in fifth with 538 convictions over the past decade. Tom Noe’s case was highlighted.
The following is a link to the story:

DOJ Public Integrity Section Report to Congress

The United States, sadly and surprisingly, leads the world in violation of citizens’ privacy. We share that honor with Communist China, Singapore, England, and Russia among others. The following is a link to the story:

Privacy International

England is no longer free. Thousands of cameras track its citizenry. In one example from England, related to a case I am pursuing here,
England has over 4,000 traffic cameras with no reduction in vehicle accidents. One of England’s strangest intrusions on civil rights is the Anti-Social Behavior Order legislation approved by parliament. Type ASBO and England into your search engine if you haven’t heard of this travesty.

In the United States we have some privacy protections but they are waning. The right to privacy is not spelled out in the Constitution but it is implicitly there. For example, the 9th Amendment says that even though the Constitution clearly sets forth certain rights, the people have other rights not listed in the Constitution. I believe one of those rights not specifically listed is the right to be left alone by our government.

Supreme Court Justice Justice Brandeis’s dissent in Olmstead v. U. S. (1928) points us in the right direction:
“The makers of our Constitution understood the need to secure conditions favorable to the pursuit of happiness, and the protections guaranteed by this are much broader in scope, and include the right to life and an inviolate personality — the right to be left alone — the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men. The principle underlying the Fourth and Fifth Amendments is protection against invasions of the sanctities of a man’s home and privacies of life. This is a recognition of the significance of man’s spiritual nature, his feelings, and his intellect.”

Cases that deal with privacy include:
Meyer v Nebraska (1923)
Griswold v Connecticut (1965)
Stanley v Georgia (1969)
Ravin v State (1975)
Kelley v Johnson (1976)
Cruzan v. Missouri Dep’t. of Health (1990)
Lawrence v Texas (2003)

The Bill of Rights (and 14th Amendment) Provisions Relating to the Right of Privacy
First Amendment: privacy of beliefs:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

The Third Amendment: privacy within the home:
No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.

Fourth Amendment: privacy of the individual and his or her possessions:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

The Ninth Amendment leaves rights intact even though they are not named in the Constitution:
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

The Fourteenth Amendment guarantees us Liberty:
No State shall… deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.

We could also look to another founding document for guidance: The Declaration of Independence that states: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

Of all the presidential candidates running Republican Ron Paul is the most concerned with personal liberty. Of course that may be why he was denied a spot at the Des Moines, Iowa debate. I pray that his message gets out there. I have never donated to a Republican presidential candidate but I intend to donate to Ron Paul’s campaign this year. Our “Land of Liberty” is becoming a land without privacy.

The following language in the new law arguably puts bloggers into the definition of “news media” thereby allowing us to ask for fee waivers on our records requests:

The term ‘a representative of the news media’ means any person or entity that gathers information of potential interest to a segment of the public, uses its editorial skills to turn the raw materials into a distinct work, and distributes that work to an audience. In this clause, the term ‘news’ means information that is about current events or that would be of current interest to the public.

Examples of news-media entities are television or radio stations broadcasting to the public at large and publishers of periodicals (but only if such entities qualify as disseminators of ‘news’) who make their products available for purchase by or subscription by or free distribution to the general public.

These examples are not all-inclusive. Moreover, as methods of news delivery evolve (for example, the adoption of the electronic dissemination of newspapers through telecommunications services), such alternative media shall be considered to be news-media entities.

The mother of a man who died while he was being apprehended by police has sued Broadview Heights, a suburb of Cleveland, to obtain public records concerning her son’s arrest and death, the Cleveland Plain Dealer is reporting today. The following is a link to the story:

Plain Dealer Article

Why make a tape: so others, not in the torture room, could hear and watch the statements. Why destroy: to hide the abuse.

Here it is:

“You couldn’t have more than one or two analysts in the room,” said A. B. Krongard, the C.I.A.’s No. 3 official at the time the interrogations were taped. “You want people with spectacular language skills to watch the tapes. You want your top Al Qaeda experts to watch the tapes. You want psychologists to watch the tapes. You want interrogators in training to watch the tapes.”

Given such advantages, why was the taping stopped by the end of 2002, less than a year after it started?

“By that time,” Mr. Krongard said, “paranoia was setting in.”

Contrary to predictions, President Bush signed a new bill aimed at giving the public and the media greater access to government information. The new law strengthens FOIA by creating a tracking system for FOIA requests, a hot line service for federal agencies to deal with problems, and an ombudsman to resolve problems with requests. The law restores the presumption that government agencies should release information if disclosure could do harm. Agencies are required to meet a 20-day deadline for responding to FOIA requests. In an enlargement of the law, nonproprietary information held by government contractors is now subject to FOIA requests and attorney fees are easier to get when a FOIA lawsuit is successful. Justice Department statistics show that last year the government received 21.4 million FOIA requests.

From the Blog Grits for Breakfast out of Texas:

A FOIA request revealed to News 8 in Austin, Texas that some of the people who got the Ex-Im Bank loans may have drug connections. The $243 million worth of bad loans were originally made to help trade with Mexico.

The loans have been linked to the Juarez drug cartel, which is known for its brutal murders. The cartel killed one dozen people and buried them in a suburban backyard across the border fro El Paso.

Another loan was linked to the Sinaloa drug cartel, whose business is smuggling heroin into the United States.

The federally funded Ex-Im Bank apparently backed loans to people affiliated with both cartels and the Mexican drug trade.

Under the Freedom of Information Act, News 8 asked for all documentation related to defaulted small business loans made to Mexico from 2002 to 2005. Although there were nearly 200 bad loans, so far, information on only 34 cases has been turned over.

But the bank did give a list of the defaulted loans and the names and addresses of the people who got them in Mexico.

“They have drug connections, which is very disheartening to think that the U.S. government is lending money to documented traffickers in the drug trade that are tied into the cartels in Mexico,” said Phil Jordan, the former head of the El Paso Intelligence Center for the DEA and Border Patrol in El Paso.

Jordan ran background checks of the borrowers with two federal sources and found borrowers from Juarez and Sinaloa with criminal ties to money laundering, organized crime or drugs in Mexico. Jordan said he was surprised to find that the Ex-Im Bank didn’t do similar checks before guaranteeing the loans.

“To lend them millions of dollars and then to not be a fail safe system of checks and balances is just throwing money away,” he said.

Between these revelations and the questions about US ownership of a drug plane downed earlier this year, not to mention the raft of official corruption, you have to seriously wonder whether at least some of the “drug bosses” on the American side might just reside quietly in the bowels of government?