Bob Dylan Arrested for Walking

Bob Dylan was on the pavement, thinking about the government. And they arrested him. Rock legend Bob Dylan was treated like a complete unknown by police in a New Jersey shore community when a resident called to report someone wandering around the neighborhood. Dylan was in Long Branch, about a two-hour drive south of New York City, on July 23 as part ...

Ideological Wind Tunnels

Glenn Greenwald rebuts those who think his strident attacks on Presidents Bush and Obama for abusing their power make his blog "an ideological wind tunnel" and that he is "oblivious to the practical considerations policymakers must contend with." By the design of the Founders, most American political issues are driven by the vicissitudes of political realities, shaped by practicalities and resolved by ...

Clear Card Ceases

The Clear Card program whereby pre-screened passengers are expedited through airport security is no more.  I received this email overnight: Ensuring that this wasn't some sort of odd email fraud scheme, I did a quick news search and, sure enough, it's true: Clear began in 2005 with the potential to make airport security quicker and easier for frequent travelers. For an annual ...

A Secret the NYT Kept vs. Those It Did Not

Scott Johnson contrasts the NYT's silence on the David Rohde kidnapping to protect the safety of their reporter with "the Times's illegal exposure of the NSA terrorist eavesdropping program in December 2005, as well as its exposure of the Treasury Department's terrorist-finance tracking program in June 2006. Whereas the reporting of Rohde's apprehension may have endangered his life, the disclosure ...

Rummaging Through Underage Girls’ Panties

Apparently, the Supreme Court is leaning towards letting school administrators do just that. The case in question is a about a girl who was strip searched by school officials when she was 13 years old in eighth grade. The school officials were acting on a tip from another girl who had been caught with prescription strength ibuprofen. ...

Wiretaps Run Amok

Andrew Sullivan is soliciting right-of-center comments on a report by Eric Lichtblau and James Risen that has mostly attracted left-of-center commenters thus far. Here's the lede: The National Security Agency intercepted private e-mail messages and phone calls of Americans in recent months on a scale that went beyond the broad legal limits established by Congress last year, government officials said ...

Supreme Court to Hear Honor Student Strip Search Case

The Supreme Court agreed yesterday to hear the case of Savana Redding, who, as "a 13-year-old honor student who was subjected to a strip search by school officials in Arizona looking for prescription-strength ibuprofen." The gist of the dispute, as described by Adam Liptak for NYT: The strip-search case was brought by the mother of Savana Redding, who in ...

U.S. Constitution: 4th Amendment

A while back, I asked for reader suggestions on posts but, alas, have published no posts in response to said suggestions.  Most of the suggestions were for posts and post series requiring research.  Three of my colleagues have volunteered to write something in response to suggested topics and I have underway a post on General and Flag Officers, which was ...

FISA Reform Moves Forward, Netroots Angry at Obama

The Senate easily invoked cloture yesterday, ending a threatened filibuster of a major overhaul of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978. The revised bill is expected to pass today. This may be the most important bill we pass this year," said Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), an architect of the bill crafted over four months ...

TSA ID Requirements

Those who wish to fly without ID cards have but a few more days. Beginning Saturday, June 21, 2008 passengers that willfully refuse to provide identification at security checkpoint will be denied access to the secure area of airports. This change will apply exclusively to individuals that simply refuse to provide any identification or assist transportation security officers in ascertaining ...

Clear Card Holders Jump Airport Security Lines

Today's WaPo has a short feature on Clear Cards, whereby travelers get to bypass TSA security lines at select airports for a small fee. Fast-pass security lanes officially opened at Reagan National and Dulles airports Wednesday for travelers with special clearance. Heres how it works: Fliers undergo a Transportation Security Administration background check and have personal data, plus iris and fingerprint ...

Huckabee Would NOT End Birthright Citizenship (Updated)

Mike Huckabee wants to overturn the 14th Amendment, the Washington Times reports. Mike Huckabee wants to amend the Constitution to prevent children born in the U.S. to illegal aliens from automatically becoming American citizens, according to his top immigration surrogate — a radical step no other major presidential candidate has embraced. Mr. Huckabee, who won last week's Republican Iowa caucuses, promised ...

Race Riots and Assimilation

Over at The Glittering Eye, Dave Schuler extends the argument he's made in the comments of my tongue-in-cheek post on the fact that the media continues to ignore the ethnic-religious component of the rioting in France. He argues that the problem goes beyond religion and is ultimately about assimilation and "giving the descendants of immigrants a stake ...

Bridge Protestors Face Sanction for Anti-Bush Sign

A championship womens' bridge team went Dixie Chick and are now facing possible sanctions. In the genteel world of bridge, disputes are usually handled quietly and rarely involve issues of national policy. But in a fight reminiscent of the brouhaha over an anti-Bush statement by Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks in 2003, a team of women who represented the ...

The Coup at Home?

In an incredibly hyperbolic piece with the over-the-top headline "The Coup at Home," NYT columnist Frank Rich draws an equivalence between the coup in Pakistan and the incremental decline of freedom in the United States in the name of counter-terrorism. The gist of the piece: The Pakistan mess, as The New York Times editorial page aptly named it, is not just another ...