Category Archives: Civil Liberties

04.22.13
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National Constitution Center: Constitution Check: Are there limits on questioning a bombing suspect?

Lyle Denniston looks at the issues of Miranda warnings, Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, Tsarnaev’s protections under the Constitution’s Fifth Amendment, and the public safety exception.

The statements at issue:

“The police can interrogate a suspect without offering him the benefit of Miranda [warnings] if he could have information that’s of urgent concern for public safety. That may or may not be the case with Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. The problem is that Attorney General Eric Holder has stretched the law beyond that scenario.”

– Emily Bazelon, a columnist for Slate.com, in an article on April 19, “Why Should I Care That No One’s Reading Dzhokhar Tsarnaev His Miranda Rights?” 

“[As of Saturday night] Authorities have not read him his Miranda rights, which include the right to remain silent and the right to an attorney. Federal law enforcement officials said they plan to use a public safety exception, outlined in a 1984 Supreme Court decision, ‘in order to question the suspect extensively about other potential explosive devices or accomplices and to gain critical intelligence.’”

– Washington Post story on April 21, by reporters Joel Achenbach and Robert Barnes, “Authorities seek answers in Boston Marathon bombing.”

We checked the Constitution, and…

Some three decades ago, the Supreme Court for the first time gave police and federal agents the authority to avoid giving criminal suspects Miranda warnings about their constitutional rights, when the public safety justified that suspension. That authority, given in the 1984 decision of New York v. Quarles, has since been expanded by lower courts so that, even if a suspect has claimed the right to remain silent or the right to a lawyer, the questioning can go on if the public safety threat remains.

How long such questioning can continue, and what kinds of questions can be asked, is now the source of considerable uncertainty, as officials have developed interrogation policies they think are necessary in dealing with terrorist incidents. But one thing does remain certain: the Constitution still requires that the police not use outright coercion in order to get answers even to the most pressing questions. If authorities want to use the evidence that they gain by such questioning, that evidence must have been given voluntarily.

In the case of the 19-year-old suspected of bombing the Boston Marathon and other crimes after that, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, there is no doubt that he has some protection under the Constitution’s Fifth Amendment against being forced to implicate himself. He is a U.S. citizen, so he has the legal shield of the Constitution. (On April 2, we discussed the rights during terrorism investigations of suspects who are not U.S. citizens; those rights may differ.)

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Click below for the full article.

http://blog.constitutioncenter.org/2013/04/constitution-check-are-there-limits-on-questioning-a-bombing-suspect/

04.20.13
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Yahoo News: Boston bombing suspect’s arrest presents intelligence opportunity, legal challenges

BOSTON – Keeping bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev alive and able to answer questions would be a badly-needed intelligence coup for terror investigators, a former U.S. District Attorney told Yahoo News on Saturday.

“The fear of law enforcement has always been the small, insular cells that are kind of under the radar,” said Richard Roper, a federal prosecutor for 21 years. “Either the lone wolf or the small cells … they’re difficult to obtain intelligence on. I hope they get some good stuff out of him.”

On Saturday, Dzhokhar was reportedly clinging to life and under heavy guard at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. He apparently suffered gunshot wounds to the neck and leg during separate gun battles with authorities on Friday.

Tsarnaev, 19, and his brother, 26-year-old Tamerlan Tsarnaev, are believed to have planted the two backpack bombs near the finish line of Monday’s Boston Marathon. The twin explosions killed three people and injured 180 others……..

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“There’s a need to immediately question the guy whether you Mirandize him or not to save lives,” Roper said. “The question is how far do you go before it turns into a custodial interrogation?”

Republican Senators John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina went a step further, suggesting Dzhokhar be treated as an enemy combatant like a soldier captured in war. The move drew the ire of longtime McCain aide and speechwriter Mark Salter.

“My friend, Lindsey Graham, is wrong on this,” Salter posted on his Facebook page. “However unforgivable his crimes, he’s a US citizen, arrested on US soil, with, at this time, no known associations with foreign terrorist organizations at war with the U.S. To declare him an “enemy combatant,” and deny him his rights is un-American.”

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What do you all think, does the constitution only apply to some citizens or all?

Click below for the full article.

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/boston-bombing-suspect-arrest-presents-intelligence-opportunity-legal-183858408.html

04.19.13
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ABC NEWS: Talk Begins of April 22 Online ‘Blackout’ in CISPA Protest

ht cispa law nt 130419 wblog Talk Begins of April 22 Online Blackout in CISPA Protest

No sooner had the House of Representatives passed the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act  (CISPA), on Thursday, than word began spreading of an online protest. Some are suggesting the protest take the form of a “blackout” – going offline for 24 hours, displaying censorship bars over content or  posting statements of opposition to Internet censorship — similar to last year’s opposition to the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA).

Supporters on Twitter have begun tweeting the hashtag #CISPABlackout to promote the proposed April 22 “blackout.”

Though proponents see the bill as a strong measure to fight cyber threats and better protect citizens, organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union, The Internet Defense League and the Electronic Frontier Foundation oppose CISPA because of the jurisdiction it would provide for the federal government to procure personal information shared with private-sector entities such as Google or Facebook.

The original draft of CISPA first passed the House in 2012, but died in the Senate and was publicly opposed by the White House. “The administration strongly opposes [CISPA], in its current form,” Obama’s Office of Management and Budget said in a statement last year.

The office of the president hasn’t changed its tune for CISPA 2013 either, recently issuing a statement: “The administration still seeks additional improvements, and if the bill, as currently crafted, were presented to the president, his senior advisers would recommend that he veto the bill.”

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Click below for the full article.

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/technology/2013/04/talk-begins-of-april-22-online-blackout-in-cispa-protest/

04.19.13
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The Motley Fool: Obamacare and Sequestration Crush UnitedHealth

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Click below for the full article.

http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2013/04/19/obamacare-and-sequestration-crush-unitedhealth.aspx

04.19.13
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The Week: The insanity of blaming Islam

We are still speculating about virtually everything right now, but I feel as though I need to explain why I find the quick and easy conversation about Muslims being radicalized in America to be so illogical and laced with bigotry.

Of course, there is a global violent jihadist movement, loosely organized, that wants to recruit young men to influence policies at home and abroad and perhaps usher in the global caliphate. That ideology motivates some Muslims to kill innocent people.

But you’re allowed to be a radical Muslim in America. You’re allowed to believe that the Qu’ran proscribes the most elegant set of laws. You’re allowed to believe that one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. And you can say, in America, pretty much anything you want. Not everything, and after 9/11, a little less, but you can still make very unpopular arguments.

So just for the sake of argument, let’s assume that the only factor that motivated these two brothers from Chechnya to set off bombs and kill police officers is their decision to accept some form of radical Islamic teachings as their foundational belief system. (I highly doubt this is the case, but let’s just throw it out there.)

We ask: “We have to look at the whole issue of radicalization. What prompts someone raised as an American to cause such carnage?”

That’s what Peter King, the Republican chair of the Homeland Security committee, asked. So he goes right to the religion; somehow, he slides very quickly past the possibility that something about America is radicalizing people of all sorts.

He commits the sin of essentialism.

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Click below for the full article.

http://theweek.com/article/index/243051/the-insanity-of-blaming-islam

 

04.19.13
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CNN: Uncle calls Boston Marathon bombers ‘losers,’ urges nephew to surrender

When asked what provoked the bombing suspects, the uncle stated: “Being losers, hatred to those who were able to settle themselves — these are the only reasons I can imagine.

“Anything else, anything else to do with religion, with Islam, is a fraud, is a fake,” Tsarni said.

“Somebody radicalized them, but it’s not my brother who just moved back to Russia, who spent his life bringing bread to their table, fixing cars. He didn’t have time or chance or anything, options. He’s been working,” Tsarni said.

Tsarni says he teaches his own children to love the United States because it gives a chance to everyone “to be treated as a human being.”

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Click below for the full article.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/04/19/us/marathon-suspects-uncle/index.html

 

04.19.13
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CNN: One Bombing Suspect Dead; Other on the run

One suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings is dead. The other — his brother — was on the run Friday, pursued by an army of law enforcement officials whose manhunt virtually shut down the city.

A man identified by several sources as Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, died after an overnight shootout with police. He’s the man described Thursday by the FBI as black-capped Suspect No. 1 in the attacks Monday that killed three.

His brother, Dzhokar Tsarnaev, apparently escaped — leading police to throw a huge dragnet around the region. In photos released by the FBI of the bombing suspects, the younger brother is seen wearing a white cap. The agency called him Suspect No. 2.

Developments moved quickly:

— Police, often with guns drawn, continued to chase leads in pursuit of the surviving suspect. In Watertown, reporters were cordoned off and told to stay back.

— A Maryland man who said he was the suspects’ uncle told reporters the two men had brought shame on their family and all ethnic Chechens with the attacks, which he called an atrocity. “If you’re alive, turn yourself in and ask for forgiveness,” Ruslan Tsarni urged his nephew.

— A former teacher at the high school Dzhokar Tsarnaev attended, who lives near Tsarnaev’s residence now, described the younger brother as “a wonderful kid” who seemed incapable of such violence.

— Wednesday, two days after the bombings, Dzhokar Tsarnaev apparently tweeted, “I’m a stress free kind of guy.” Early Tuesday, he tweeted, “There are people that know the truth but stay silent & there are people that speak the truth but we don’t hear them cuz they’re the minority.”

— Tamerlan Tsarnaev was wearing explosives and a triggering device when he died, a source briefed on the investigation told CNN’s Deborah Feyerick.

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Click below for the full article.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/04/19/us/boston-area-violence/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

04.18.13
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The Week: Does the gun bill’s failure prove the Senate is broken?

Background checks have overwhelming support from the American public: A Washington Post-ABC News poll last week found that 86 percent of people support a law “requiring background checks on people buying guns at gun shows or online.”

The Senate, ostensibly, represents those same people. Yet the Toomey-Manchin bill regulating that exact issue failed in the Senate on Wednesday by a vote of 54-46. (It needed 60 votes to pass.) What’s wrong with this picture?

The main problem is that small states are vastly overrepresented in the Senate. If you judge the vote by population, the Toomey-Manchin bill actually got a majority of the votes. Alec MacGillis of The New Republic breaks down the numbers and finds that “senators voting for the bill represented about 194 million people, while the senators voting against the bill represented about 118 million people,” which is “getting close to a two-thirds majority in favor of the measure.”

While the Constitution has always protected the interests of small states, the disparity has never been this big. Ezra Klein of The Washington Post points out just how much things have changed:

During the first Congress, Virginia, the largest state, was roughly 12 times the size of Delaware, which was, at the time, the smallest state. Today, California is 66 times the size of Wyoming. That makes the Senate five times less proportionate today than it was at the founding. [Washington Post]

Of course, the effects of the Great Compromise wouldn’t be so, well, great, if it weren’t so easy to filibuster bills. “Everything needs 60 votes today. This is supposed to be a majority body,” Sen. Dianne Feinstein complained after the bill failed, according to The Huffington Post.

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Click below for the full article.

http://theweek.com/article/index/242989/does-the-gun-bills-failure-mean-the-senate-is-broken