Joseph Galloway of McClatchy Newspapers has a great July 4th op-ed (excerpt beneath the fold).

I would like you to read it, and then, in a small way, act on it (if you haven't already).

The "Most Emailed Story" on the McClatchy Newspapers Homepage is a Commentary by Joseph L. Galloway. Galloway's commentary, "How dare they rip the Fourth Amendment," castigates everyone in Congress who supports "an extension of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, with a few small amendments intended to immunize telecommunications corporations that assisted our government in the warrantless and illegal wiretapping it has grown to love."

It is worth a read for any and all who have an interest in the FISA amendments. In his commentary, Galloway says:

That such a gutting of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution even made it out of committee is yet another stain on the gutless and seemingly powerless Democratic majority in both houses of Congress. That a majority on both sides of the aisle — not least of them the presumptive nominees for president of both political parties — intend to vote for such a violation of Americans' right to privacy and of the sanctity of their personal communications is a stunning surrender to those who want us to live in fear forever.

The 2008 FISA bill which will pass the Senate on Tuesday significantly raises the stakes on the Marijuana legalization front, but not for the reasons that might come to mind. Its not about how warrantless surveillance might help them catch drug smugglers, dealers, or users; if only the factors which join the FISA and Pot issues were that mundane.

Actually, it IS all about "how you think" and "what comes to mind" - quite literally. Its about your right to control your own consciousness, and to the privacy of your thoughts. Intercepting your phone calls, emails, and text/instant messaging may be all the rage at the NSA today, but just wait a few years. The next wave of personal electronics will be a lot more "personal" than your iPod, PDA, GPS, or Cellphone is right now.

Regardless of whether or not you personally enjoy the use of entheogens, whether you are Progressive or Libertarian in your politics, the First Amendment implications of the Marijuana debate will directly impact the Fourth Amendment future of all Americans. (more...)

After many years of fighting against racial profiling, the Department of Justice is now considering using racial profiling to catch terrorists.

The Justice Department is considering letting the FBI investigate Americans without any evidence of wrongdoing, relying instead on a terrorist profile that could single out Muslims, Arabs or other racial and ethnic groups.

I don't like this at all. As someone who just finished a Civil Rights class in law school, I'm disturbed by the possibility of people being investigated simply because their skin looks a certain way or they fit a "profile".

I've been reading with dismay the messages on the newest, fastest-growing MyBO group, SenatorObama-PleaseVoteAgainstFISA. Many (not all) of those people are really taking things too far. They are withdrawing all support from Obama and even asking for refunds for all previous donations made to the Obama campaign.

I am appalled. Who in their right mind would rather see a President McCain who would strengthen and expand spying programs and invade more and more of our privacy. There are many ways to put pressure on Obama, but threatening to put in office someone who is much, much worse on the very issue you are upset about... well, that's just stupidity.

Did anyone else hear the tail end of Talk of the Nation today? They had a reporter on who outed a fake federal agent who went around the town of Gerald, MO, with police blessing, busting into houses of "suspected drug dealers" without any kind of warrant, arresting people at gunpoint and dragging them onto their lawns, demanding that they name names. He would say "I'm a federal agent, that's all you need to know. I don't need a warrant."

Link to story (audio available after 6pm): Getting the Story: Reporter Outs Fake Fed

Aside from the many, many troubling local issues involved, one point was brought up that troubled me deeply: People didn't question the assertion that he didn't require a warrant. The reporter said that people were saying "well, we know they can tap our phones now, so maybe they don't need a warrant either."

It should trouble us all that we've come to the point where warrantless searches and seizures are seen as plausible and even acceptable.

Update: AP story

Here is a message I have sent to the Obama campaign on Saturday June 21st to ask Senator Obama to fight against the FISA bill. I am not very hopeful, but perhaps the outcry of protest that is growing may convince him otherwise. I agree with Glenn Greenwald's analysis on the futility of a move to the mythical center on Obama's part: http://www.salon.com/...

Second Amendment vs Fourth Amendment.

Below is newsletter from Privacy Forum I subscribe to. The author has given me permission to quote these in toto, given it is published as a public newsletter electronically via a listserv that anyone can subscribe to, and the whole point is, after all, to try and get people to pay attention to the threats to their privacy that loom larger and out of control in our society every day.

There is little to say about it other than, well, is anyone surprised anymore at the arrogance of the corporations like AT&T? They have Congress eating out of their hands after pouring tens of millions of dollars into Congress' pockets.

Congress is going to pass a bill that unconstitutionally exempts them illegally and ex post facto from investigation for their crimes, committed at the behest of the Bush / Cheney administration.

The vast majority have not even read, and do not even know what is in the law that is about to be passed. They just know that in their secret meetings with the telecoms, as the money changed hand's they were assured is was best for them, and of course, best for America.

In his latest kos diary and "Special Comment," Keith Olbermann repeats the same inane and now quite stale refrain that we should all be comfortable with the FISA capitulation and stop complaining because Olbermann, in his infinite wisdom, has uncovered some little-known flaw in the bill. This fortuitous fuck-up saves everything, you see, and makes it OK for Obama to vote for it because -- get this, folks! -- the bill ONLY grants civil immunity! So yes, we're holding the guilty telecoms' bottom lines harmless and denying millions of Americans their day in court, but thanks to this "mistake" in the bill, Obama will prosecute these evil companies to the full extent of the law!

Oh yeah.  9/11 did change everything.

Remember the 90s?  It was the dawn of an era of globalization and easy, instantaneous movement of information.  The hero of this new age was the "road warrior" who jetted around the globe solving problems, selling Infomation Age products and making deals.  And the warrior's chief weapon was the state-of-the-art laptap crammed with all the features and data needed to accomplish the task.

Not any more.  The Patriot Act, zealous U. S. Customs and TSA officials and a Federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling giving a green light to warrantless searches and seizures has made traveling with a laptop very difficult.  And if you carry sensitive data on that laptop these days, you're a fool.

Ever since the House’s approval of the FISA capitulation and Obama’s subsequent embrace of it, those of us who care about the Constitution, the Fourth Amendment and accountability have been told by many on this site to essentially "sit down and shut up." Then we're told we also need to keep giving our money and time. That sounds too much like a mugging to me.

For all the talk about the 4th Amendment, and protecting the Constitution, for me the FISA fight is not primarily about that.  It's about something even more important: the rule of law itself.

NCrissieB has an excellent Diary explaining why the current FISA revisions will do little to damage the 4th Amendment.  Along with providing a useful history of the FISA regime, NCrissieBS compellingly argues that the 4th Amendment was effectively eviscerated by the USA PATRIOT Act, and the the current revisions are therefore of little consequence.  But this does not mean that the fight over FISA is any less important.

If the rule of law is not secure none of our rights are safe, whether they are written in the Constitution, in statutes, or in the common law.  If the law is not upheld, they are all just words on a page.  Upholding the rule of law is, in its own right, more important than nearly everything else.

'It Is Clear Most People Regard This as a Serious Privacy Invasion'

From Senate panel questions border agents' seizure of laptops

U.S. border agents are copying and seizing the contents of laptops, cell phones and digital cameras from U.S. and foreign travelers entering the United States, witnesses told a Senate subcommittee Wednesday.

The extent of this practice is unknown despite requests to the Department of Homeland Security from the Senate Subcommittee on the Constitution and several nonprofit agencies.

The department also declined to send a representative to the hearing. Subcommittee Chairman Russ Feingold, D-Wis., said Homeland Security had told him that its "preferred" witness was unavailable Wednesday.

I'm a former criminal defense appellate attorney.  Most of my cases turned on constitutional issues: search and seizure, interrogation methods, ineffective assistance of counsel, police and/or prosecutorial misconduct, and the like.  The issues that dominate the news and the blogosphere today are the issues I worked with in the grit and grist of real defendants, real victims, real crimes, real facts.

So please bear with this pragmatist and follow over the jump as she explores why this FISA bill is, to quote the Bard, "sound and fury, signifying nothing."

Over the last several days there have been many heated discussions on the FISA bill that's coming up for a vote this Wednesday (tomorrow) in the Senate. Most of the discussions have revolved around Senator Obama and his expressed support for the highly controversial bill. Many are looking to Obama as a Constitutional scholar, a consensus builder, and the de facto leader of his party to stand up for the rule of law and rally his party against this bill. The majority of posters in my view are simply outraged that the man they've been supporting, volunteering for, and contributing to is not living up to their expectations. And it seems fair to say that those expectations are not the ideals of the "starry-eyed but sadly naive purist" but rather the very rule of law, the foundation of order within our country, and the contract between our people and our government that vests the government with rank and authority in exchange for the simple protection of our liberties as elaborated in our founding documents.

AN OPEN LETTER TO SEN. BARACK OBAMA REGARDING THE FISA BILL:

Dear Sen. Obama:

Once again, History has handed you a unique and unparalleled opportunity. In the upcoming Senate vote on the seriously flawed FISA compromise, instead of letting the Republicans box you in to a losing choice, to either vote "Yes", and disappoint your base on the seminal Civil Liberties vote of the 21st Century, or "No" and be branded "Soft on Terrorism" for the duration of the campaign, you have the power to take the initiative, and redefine this moment on your own terms.

The issue of protecting the Fourth Amendment, and, by extention, the entire Bill of Rights, from over-acquisitive intelligence agencies and the national security state is one which crosses philosophical lines.  Properly framed, many Americans, on the Right, Left, and Center, share the conviction that no cicumstance we have yet seen would justify an abrogation of our Constitutional Rights, our national heritage. - more -

My Congressman, Eliot Engel joined with a majority of Republicans and a minority of Democrats, mostly conservative Blue Dogs and members of the hawkish Democratic Leadership Council, in adopting the new FISA bill. Was this what your congressman did, too?

And are you wondering why. I may have an answer as to why did Engel vote the way he did. Was he motivated by lobbyist money?

Is this quid pro quo on my congressman's part?

Does this sound like your representative in Congress?

Let's check out what motivated Eliot Engel!