Congratulations to Brandon Mayfield (in photo), who grew up in Halstead and Hutchinson, for his legal victory Wednesday. A federal judge ruled as unconstitutional two provisions of the USA Patriot Act that allowed the government to conduct surveillance and searches of American citizens without showing probable cause.
Mayfield, now an attorney in Portland, Ore., was wrongly jailed in 2004 in connection with the Madrid train bombings. He received an apology and $2 million settlement from the government last November. Wednesday’s ruling was the result of a second lawsuit challenging the Patriot Act.
In making her ruling, U.S. District Judge Anne Aiken wisely noted: “For over 200 years, this nation has adhered to the rule of law — with unparalleled success. A shift to a nation based on extraconstitutional authority is prohibited, as well as ill advised.”
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
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26 Comments
HAHAHAHA, good one, Phil, good one.
Like BushCo. ever gave a rat’s ass about a court ruling.
These guys have ignored enough subpeonas and court orders to drape the White House like something out of Christo.
Bush thinks the law is something for little people to obey and not something he or the Republicans need pay any heed to.
Aint it a drag when the Constitution wins out?Only if you’re a Republican.
We don need no stinking Constitution! It’s just a G-D piece of paper!
The reasons for having our Revolutionary War against King Geroge were a pitance compared to the so-called Neo-con and Zionist murdering Cabal, which occupies both The White House and Congress now.
Only being allowed to hear “Zionist Approved News” is the problem.
The Guardian in the UK has no such restraints, so check this out and get the picture:
“US Cajoling Israel Toward War With SyriaDaphna Baram, The Guardian
Is there any genuine anxiety in Israel over the real or imaginary Syrian nuclear weapons? If so, it’s very difficult to detect. Dropping a nuclear bomb on Israel, as far as Bashar Assad is concerned, would be like dropping one outside your own balcony. And Assad is not stupid.
The appeasing messages sent out of Assad’s palace this year freaked the hell out of Israeli officials, and prompted aggression toward him. Nothing seems to scare Israeli governments more than the idea of an Arab leader proposing peace. The responses ranged from “He is lying through his teeth while planning to attack us” to “he is proposing peace because he is too weak to go to war.”
The only Israeli prime minister who took an Arab state’s peace proposal seriously was Menachem Begin, leader of the right-wing Likud party, in 1978. Many Israelis feel that the signing of a peace accord with the Egyptians by Begin was the proof that “only the right wing can make peace”. But the truth of the matter is that reluctant Begin was dragged to Camp David and to the negotiation table by the American President Jimmy Carter, to the benefit of the Israelis and the Egyptians, at the expense of the Palestinians.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is facing a very different American administration. George Bush and his diligent secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, spare no efforts to blow the winds of war at the back of Olmert, who is desperately seeking political survival. Olmert, struggling in a sea of allegations of personal corruption and public scorn due to the failure of the not only disgraceful but also disgracing invasion of Lebanon last year, seems to be tempted to believe that a new war is the way to achieve political redemption.
In this, he is joined by another political failure desperate to prove his dubious merits — new minister of defense and former prime minister, Ehud Barak — who always fancied a Syrian distraction in order to stall even further negotiations with the Palestinians. During his tenure as prime minister, Barak was always threatening the Palestinians with engaging in negotiations with the Syrians while hanging them out to dry. Now he is implicitly threatening them by leaving them in the cold, while considering the possibility an attack on Syria.
The escalation has been prompted by American policy over the last five years. From the allegations that Saddam Hussein transferred all his legendary weapons of mass destruction to Syria before the invasion of Iraq to the current accusations of a Syrian-North Korean nuclear axis, the US has singled out Syria as an anachronistic state due to fall, and designated Israel to do its dirty work.
Dirty it would indeed be. Many Israelis are still traumatized by the bitter fighting against the Syrians in the Golan Heights during the 1973 War, and wonder whether the current rather wobbly Israeli Army would suffer a much worse defeat on the Syrian front than the bloody nose it got from Hezbollah last year.
They are also well-aware of the fact that, weak as Syria may be, if attacked, it would have no choice but to use its Scud missiles, which have a range that covers the whole of Israel. Israeli citizens are already horrified by the proven inability of the Israeli countermeasures to defend them.
During the 2006 war in Lebanon, thousands of the inhabitants of the Israeli north found themselves in a refugee camp in central Israel, courtesy of the Israeli-Russian oligarch and wannabe politician Arcadi Gaydamak. A self-glorifying private initiative replaced the state’s obligation to its citizens. Having to count on such charity again is not an appealing prospect.
The American insistence on putting obstacles in the path to peace and backing Israeli belligerence is apparent not only on the Syrian front. Rice responded to the Israeli declaration of Gaza as “enemy entity” by saying that the US also regards Gaza under Hamas control as an enemy. This is an American green light to Barak and Olmert’s declared plan to cut off all Gaza’s infrastructure, a strategy likely to create a humanitarian catastrophe.
All this is taking place under the banner of the Bush-initiated “peace summit”, to take place in November, which aims to dictate some conditions to the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Abbas is a decent man who has been undermined by the American and Israeli insistence on ignoring the elected Hamas leadership and making Abbas lead a bloody battle against Hamas in the West Bank and Gaza.
Whatever arrangements are forced on him in that summit will inevitably lead to the total collapse of his already scant credibility in Palestine.
Israel should strive to advance its own interests in reaching settlements with both Syria and Hamas beyond the suffocating embrace of American policy.
But with Olmert busy ducking behind Rice’s back to escape police investigations, and the final Winograd Commission report regarding his Lebanese adventure, and with Barak keen to go back to his days as a general, the chances of this happening are as slim as ever.”
90% too 100% of the wire taps without probable cause are used for “Insider Trading” and for “Claim Jumping”. They use these too manipulate stocks and to block now ideas and growth. It is a typical form of Personal Agenda. The Government, mainly President Bush and Enron/Halliburton etc:.. Manipulate and profit from the “”Pirated Info”". This is why Congress refuses to strenghten the “”Piracy Laws”". They are protecting President Bush and their Personal Agenda Portfolios. We need to be careful in all our votes and vote wisely and vote with 4 years in mind. Herbert West III Publisher/Journalist wen2k.com , west.herb@yahoo.com , 913-294-9375
Leftists killed the constitution back in the sixties with their civil wrongs nonsense, so quit yer yappin’.
Bush Derangement Syndrome Part 999,999,999,999
Hate Bush at all costs and never look at the consequences….
Real bright, mature, rational, “evolved”……
The absence of “whistleblowers” is perhaps the most “telling” aspect of the depth of corruption throughout the government.
They’re all “in” on it.
Most of the “inmates” at Gitmo have been there for the same put up reasons but they’ve been stuck there since late 2001.
Wonder if the people held for 5-6 that Bush and his Nazi’s finally let go received 2 Million and a plane ride back home?!?
Oh,BTW the Bush Countdown Clock is at 479 days 16 hours and running.
Time just can’t go by quick enough to get Bush and his fringe,neo-con,nut case cabal out of office.
Bush thinks the law is something for little people to obey
Kinda like Leona Helmsly?
And you wingnuts want to give THESE people tax breaks in the hope some pennies will “trickle down” to you?
hehehehehehehehhee……
Oh, and because this judge upheld the constitution, I suppose the resident wingnuts here will be crying “activist judges! activist judges!”
Dont ya just love how the wingers here love the rule of law? Except when they dont?
BIG effin’ eye roll…
I think Mayfield had a very strong case being falsely accused of being a participant in the Madrid train bombings. All of that was just too weird.
“In place of the Fourth Amendment,” the judge wrote, “the people are expected to defer to the Executive Branch and its representation that it will authorize such surveillance only when appropriate.” She said the government was “asking this court to, in essence, amend the Bill of Rights, by giving it an interpretation that would deprive it of any real meaning.”
There are still the wingnuts who back this administration, even in the face of such outrageous and egregious violations of the Constitution.
Yet if there’s even the SLIGHTEST mention of regulating firearms, the wingnuts _go_ nuts.
As much as I agree (from the limited media reports I’ve read) with the District Court’s decision, I remember it will go up on appeal.
BDS? Isn’t that the Bush Deity Syndrome, that the 28%’ers suffer from?
So we can take it from conservatives’ posts here that Mayfield was denied his 4th Amendment rights due to the Patriot Act. So, that bogus question, what rights have you lost from the Patriot Act? will now be suspended, correct. Because if any one of our fellow citizens lose such rights, that opens the door for all of us losing them.
“Yet if there’s even the SLIGHTEST mention of regulating firearms, the wingnuts _go_ nuts.”
Tom
The Second Amendment doesn’t allow for regulating private ownership of firearms.
“and the right of the people to keep and bear firearms shall not be infringed”
Soooo, You wanna fringe it?
{ 16,000 teenagers left home in cars only to never return, now there’s one you can “fringe” and it’s not even an amendment }.
I don’t think it said firearms. I think it said arms. I am going to file a case with the Supreme Court to get my nuke. It’s in the constitution, and it didn’t specify which arms!
Maybe they meant our body parts?
We have the right to bear arms….maybe they meant grizzly appendages? Or bare…as in shaven?
TSK TSK>
Oh and doesn’t it say something about a militia?
Yes, PMom, it does say something very specific about a militia… a well-regulated one in fact!!
SteveDo you claim that there was NEVER a false arrest prior to the Patriot Act?Mistakes will happen, no matter what laws are on the books.
ChasThe founders were afraid of government.The founders wanted the PEOPLE to keep and bear arms in order to keep the GOVERNMENT in line!
Very true, Econ.
And that’s why they adamantly opposed a standing Army with its huge costs.
They knew that the Army is the primary weapon of government against its own people.
Were they right or what?
CapnAs I have posted, previously, the Constitutional concerns of a “standing army” have much to do with why Presidents, including Bush, generally can NOT send in troops without the consent of the Governor.
However, the “no standing army” feelings of our founders were tempered by history. We nearly lost the War of 1812, for many reasons. Disorganization, unpopularity and the refusal of the New England states to provide troops or money, to name a few.
The “Whiskey Rebellion” and more than a few SHOOTING wars between the states, shortly after the Revolution, were also problems.
The whole “militia” thing being as it may, the second amendment to the constitution states that the right of the PEOPLE (not the Government, the State, or the Militia) to bear arms shall not be infringed. If people means anything other than you or I, then it means that in the 4th and 1st and all the other amendments as well.
The right to bear arms is a protection of the people against the government. It is also an extension of our right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness vis a vis not getting dead or having our stuff stolen.
However, the thing I wish the neocons (with whom I AGREE on the 2nd Amendment wholeheartedly) would figure out is that this intrusive, big government with unchecked powers is a much greater threat than the Bradys. I’m glad that this was ruled unconstitutional…. ALL of the constitution matters, not just one amendment.
After the war of 1812, didn’t the US have to ask for bits of Michigan back that the Canadians still held, and if the purpose was to annex Canada and it didn’t happen, how did the US win the war of 1812? The war of 1812 on this side of the Atlantic was a side show compared to the Napoleon bit, started because Madison thought he could finally achieve mainfest destiny on the cheap while Britain was otherwise occupied. He didn’t think that the colonials north of the border would fight to protect their way of life and would flock to the US colours. Heard that before? The New Englanders though, just couldn’t stomach “Mr Madisons” War. Skirmish/battle victories achieved by both combattants aside the strategic purpose was not attained