Civil Rights

by Peter Scheer

The Justice Department has been getting hammered in (and by) the press over a leak investigation involving the seizure of emails from the personal gmail account of James Rosen, a reporter for Fox News. The criticism has focused on the revelation, contained in a 2010 FBI affidavit used to obtain a search warrant, that the government then viewed Rosen not merely as a witness, someone who possessed evidence about the source of a national security leak, but as an indictable law-breaker.

Rosen’s source, according to the affidavit, was a government contractor who allegedly gave Rosen classified information about North Korea’s nuclear program. The Fox reporter’s crime: soliciting the information (aka doing his job as a journalist). The FBI affidavit claimed that, by aggressively soliciting a leak of classified information, Rosen had “aided, abetted or conspired” with his source in violating the “Unauthorized Disclosure of National Defense Information” statute (18 USC section 793).

This week I got into an interesting text exchange from an old friend challenging me on Obama’s less than acceptable record on civil liberties.  The problem that my friend had is that I largely agree with him on the President’s record on civil liberties.  However, I do not see the scandal on Benghazi or even the IRS.

The backdrop of Obama’s presidency is the eight years of the Bush administration, which is probably the worst black stain on America’s liberties since the 1960s, at least.  You have, at best, the questionable use of intelligence to plunge us into a costly, destructive, and needless war in Iraq, the use of torture, indefinite detention, the Patriot Act, wiretapping, and so on.

Perhaps it is the long and destructive decade in the war on terror, but there is a marked shift in public opinion.  Pollsters note that, following the 1995 bombing in Oklahoma City and the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the public responded to those attacks with a willingness to give up liberties in exchange for security measures.

Since then we have seen wiretapping, indefinite detentions, and of course the decade-long wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.  In the wake of the most recent “terrorist” attack on the Boston Marathon, the public has responded differently.

A look at the Public Safety Exception to Miranda – It was a long and traumatic week for the country last week – a week that began with the tragic bombings and ended with the dramatic capture of 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.  Once captured, alive but badly injured, the question turned to how to prosecute the US citizen.

Quickly throwing gasoline on the already burning fire was South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, who tweeted on Friday night that the alleged bomber should be denied his Miranda rights.

Democrats in Washington believe they have the 60 votes they need to proceed to a debate on gun control legislation, after a number of Republicans agreed not to support a filibuster following a deal on background checks for gun purchases being announced on Wednesday by Republican Senator Pat Toomey (Pennsylvania) and Democrat Joe Manchin (West Virginia).

According to The Hill, “The proposal would expand background checks to cover all sales at gun shows and over the Internet. Those background checks would have to be accompanied by records proving to law enforcement officials they took place.”

It seems a number of people, in arguing against marriage equality, believe there is a broader agenda at work here.  Leaving aside the untenable logic of the claim that you might oppose a reasonable reform because you fear the next reform will be less than reasonable, I think marriage equality has taken on a symbolic importance in the broader movement toward civil rights for all.

While I believe marriage equality is an important step, as it begins to equalize critical institutions, and gives same-sex partnerships the same legal status of protection that others enjoy, at the same time I believe it might not even be the most important of changes still to be achieved.

Supporters of Prop 8’s ban on same sex marriage want to have it both ways.  On the one hand they will point to the expression of popular will in the Prop 8 vote, but at the same time they wish to ignore the sea change of public opinion, not just in California but nationwide, on this subject.

Last week, Nate Silver analyzed eight national polls on the same-sex marriage question and found, “The consensus of these polls is that support for same-sex marriage now exceeds opposition to it; on average, the polls have 51 percent saying they approve same-sex marriage, and 43 percent saying they are opposed.”

Mayor Krovoza Signs onto Mayoral Opposition to Prop 8 – It has been more than four years since California passed Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage.  In August 2010, a federal district court invalidated Proposition 8 on the grounds that it violated the equal protection guarantee of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution, by taking away the right of same-sex couples to marry without a sufficient governmental interest.

U.S. Federal Court Judge Vaughn R. Walker, in a 136-page ruling, said “Because California has no interest in discriminating against gay men and lesbians, and because Proposition 8 prevents California from fulfilling its constitutional obligation to provide marriages on an equal basis, the court concludes that Proposition 8 is unconstitutional.”

By Dan Aiello

State Assemblyman Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco) is following through on his promise to reform California’s prisons with the introduction of a homeless rights bill intended to decriminalize homelessness in the Golden State, protecting “some of society’s most vulnerable members.”

Make no mistake, Assembly Bill 5 is as much prison reform, as it is civil rights, legislation.

I often believe that scientific allegories give us an insight into our culture that we may lack, because ideas presented in a more straightforward way can run into opposition.  For the past week I have gone to a particular episode in the TV Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

In a make-believe world of vampires and demons, the tolksfolk in the fictitious California town of Sunnydale were often immune and indifferent to killings.  But a day when two young children were found dead, the town awoke to its problems and rose up in arms in a modern day witchhunt for the culprit – now, it turned out a demon had fabricated the situation to inflame the passions, but the main point is that the demon understood that the vehicle of child victims was a powerful tool that could awake even the most entrenched indifference.

As a father, I found myself, as I watched and listened to the reports, holding back tears, thankful that I knew my children were safe and sound.  Realizing how precarious life really is.

National tragedies like these have a natural course.  There is the shock.  There is the dizzying array of reports, most of them conflicting as rumors and innuendo begin to substitute for substantiated facts.  You always hope for the best, but yesterday we learned that if it was not the worst-case scenario coming true, it was its close cousin.

A new Associated Press-GfK Poll released today finds that almost four of every five Americans now believe that temperatures are on the rise and global warming will become a serious problem if nothing is done about it. The GfK Group is Germany’s largest market research institute.

The most interesting finding is within one subgroup – those people who do not trust scientists on the environmental front.