Here’s a passage from Wednesday’s New York Times story on yet another set of secret legal opinions issued by the Bush Administration’s Department of Justice licensing the use of torture in interrogations:

From the secret sites in Afghanistan, Thailand and Eastern Europe where C.I.A. teams held Qaeda terrorists, questions for the lawyers at C.I.A. headquarters arrived daily. Nervous interrogators wanted to know: Are we breaking the laws against torture?

The Bush administration had entered uncharted legal territory beginning in 2002, holding prisoners outside the scrutiny of the International Red Cross and subjecting them to harrowing pressure tactics. They included slaps to the head; hours held naked in a frigid cell; days and nights without sleep while battered by thundering rock music; long periods manacled in stress positions; or the ultimate, waterboarding.

Never in history had the United States authorized such tactics. While President Bush and C.I.A. officials would later insist that the harsh measures produced crucial intelligence, many veteran interrogators, psychologists and other experts say that less coercive methods are equally or more effective.

With virtually no experience in interrogations, the C.I.A. had constructed its program in a few harried months by consulting Egyptian and Saudi intelligence officials and copying Soviet interrogation methods long used in training American servicemen to withstand capture.

— Scott Shane, David Johnston and James Risen, New York Times (2007-10-03): Secret U.S. Endorsement of Severe Interrogations, p. 2

(Link thanks to feministing 2007-09-27.)

Cops in America are heavily armed and trained to be bullies, and they routinely hurt people who pose no serious threat to anyone, in order to establish, maintain, or take control of the situation. People who complain about this kind of rough handling are treated like trash, as if any level of intimidation and violence whatsoever were obviously legitimate, and the victims are to blame for provoking whatever they get. This is especially likely if the victims have features that mark them as targets for the special concern of the police — if they are black, or poor, or young, or Muslims, or immigrants, or women who speak loudly and forcefully, or queer, or political activists, or for whatever other reason. And they are especially vehement and arrogant about this kind of behavior when civilians dare to watch, record, and/or object to how the cops are treating somebody else.

In New York City, a group of cops who were hassling a young black man were questioned by members of the Sylvia Rivera Law Project outside an East Village bar. The cops turned their violent attention on these peaceably assembled people, grabbing a couple of people for arrest and then spraying pepper spray, apparently without warning and without provocation, into the rest of the crowd. Here is what SRLP has to say about it:

The Sylvia Rivera Law Project is an organization that works on behalf of low-income people of color who are transgender, gender non-conforming, or intersex, providing free legal services and advocacy among many other initiatives. On Wednesday night, the Sylvia Rivera Law Project was celebrating its fifth anniversary with a celebration and fundraising event at a bar in the East Village.

A group of our community members, consisting largely of queer and transgender people of color, witnessed two officers attempting to detain a young Black man outside of the bar. Several of our community members asked the officers why they were making the arrest and using excessive force. Despite the fact that our community was on the sidewalk, gathered peacefully and not obstructing foot traffic, the NYPD chose to forcefully grab two people and arrested them. Without warning, an officer then sprayed pepper spray across the group in a wide arc, temporarily blinding many and causing vomiting and intense pain.

This is the sort of all-too-common police violence and overreaction towards people of color that happens all the time, said Dean Spade,founder of the Sylvia Rivera Law Project. It’s ironic that we were celebrating the work of an organization that specifically opposes state violence against marginalized communities, and we experienced a police attack at our celebration.

We are outraged, and demand that our community members be released and the police be held accountable for unnecessary use of excessive force and falsely arresting people, Spade continued.

Damaris Reyes is executive director of GOLES, an organization working to preserve the Lower East Side. She commented, I’m extremely concerned and disappointed by the 9th Precinct’s response to the situation and how it escalated into violence. This kind of aggressive behavior doesn’t do them any good in community-police relations.

In the comments at Feministing, a law student who was there when it happens, elaborates:

From what I could tell last night: a group of queer and trans people, many of color, were gathered outside the bar where the fundraiser after-party was going on, talking and having a cigarette. Some of the attendees noticed a young black man being stopped by the police, who began arresting him. I am not sure if this man was part of the party or not. The police became agitated when the attendees (many of whom are lawyers, law students and legal workers since this WAS, after all, a fundraiser for a legal nonprofit) began questioning them on the nature of the arrest. The police demanded that everyone disburse and pepper sprayed an arc around them, leaving a number of individuals, including those who weren’t involved in conversation with police, crying, vomiting, and collapsed on the sidewalk. After this, some people ran to get water, and others attempted (and eventually received) the badge numbers and names of the arresting officers, and asked bystanders to write them down. After this, Dean Spade asked the crowd to go back inside, and I walked away since it was getting close to bedtime for me. This is as much as I could tell.

I still do not know what the two attendees were arrested for, nor what the young black man was detained (and arrested?) for.

In an update to the original notice, the Sylvia Rivera Law Project adds:

We are getting word that the arraignments are likely to happen during night court tonight [Thursday 9/27] some time between 5pm and 1am. If you can, go to the court to show support!

The arraignment court rooms are at 100 Centre St (Directions: No. 4 or 5train to Brooklyn Bridge Station; No. 6 train, N, R or C train to Canal Street; No. 1 train to Franklin Street; M1, M6 and M15 bus lines are nearby. 100 Centre Street is one block north of Worth Street,three blocks south of Canal Street.) Ask for directions to the arraignment rooms at the info desk when you enter.

And:

If you would like to receive email updates, send a blank email to sept26-subscribe@lists.mayfirst.org

Today is the 220th annual International Ignore the Constitution Day!

In the United States, the federal government’s arbitrary laws supposedly mandate that over the course of this day, schools put on Spontaneous Demonstrations celebrating the founding of the federal government. (I suppose this is after the schools begin their day by ritualistically forcing students to swear allegiance to the federal government.) When Turkmenbashi did this sort of thing, it was called megalomania; when federal government of the United States does it, it is called civics education.

In this secessionist republic of one, we mark the day as a special reminder that the United States Constitution, in its origins, was an act of naked usurpation and an objective force for evil, imposed upon a great mass of people who never agreed to it (nor were even asked), and effecting genocide and the protection of chattel slavery at the point of federal bayonets. Today it is treated as the Enabling Act of a monster State, and as such is the begetter of war, the builder of prisons, the armament of professional thugs, the authorization of Presidential and Congressional power over the lives of innocent people, and all of it over people who have never given any meaningful consent to the arbitrary rule of Washington, D.C. Domineering presidents, legislators, and judges use the powers delegated explicitly or implicitly as an excuse to dominate, to ruin and to kill; cowardly or opportunistic presidents, legislators, and judges use the supposed separation of powers as an excuse to stand by and do nothing while the predators in other branches of government keep on dominating and ruining and killing. The Constitution is interpreted by the highest legal authorities designated by that very document as licensing imperial war, Star Chamber courts, domestic and foreign surveillance, the racist War on Drugs, ruinous taxation, corporate welfare, government cartelization and regimentation of every key industry, in direct proportion to its importance; and if the Constitution does not in fact state that these things are allowed, it has done nothing to prevent them. Some people who ought to know better pretend that a document such as this one deserves respect, or even that it should be taken as a source of our [marching orders][] in matters of life and death, substituting a genuflection to that damned rag in place of a moral defense of freedom and peace. Ignoring the Constitution is routinely used as a grave insult in political discourse — whether applied to the president, the legislature, or the courts — supposedly synonymous with arbitrary tyranny. As if slavishly complying with the dictates of a 220 year old edict, arbitrarily issued without the consent of more than a handful of scheming conspirators, and now laying its dead hands upon us without the consent of anyone at all, were any less tyrannical!

Today is a day to mark that nonsense for what it is. Tyranny is tyranny whether or not it is written into a document, whether that document is called Constitution or any other name. And justice is justice, whatever any document may say; it can stand on its own in arguments, and needs no authorization from any human-crafted covenant or edict, which can neither make nor unmake even one of the rights or even one of the obligations that inhere in justice towards free and equal people, prior to any agreement or act of will. Of course, when government officials ignore the Constitution, they almost always do so in order to usurp arbitrary power and inflict the worst sorts of injustices on innocent people who never did anything to deserve it. But when government officials obey the Constitution, they still almost always do so in order to usurp arbitrary power and inflict the worst sorts of injustices on innocent people who never did anything to deserve it. That is what government officials do, and it’s what government officials did at the time they made up the Constitution, too; and the evils of it have exactly nothing to do with whether or not those usurpations and injustices have been formally enacted according to the procedures set forth in the arbitrary United States Constitution. William Lloyd Garrison knew how to educate the people and celebrate the glorious achievements of that document:

The [4th of July 1851] rally began with a prayer and a hymn. Then Garrison launched into one of the most controversial performances of his career. To-day, we are called to celebrate the seventy-eighth anniversary of American Independence. In what spirit? he asked, with what purpose? to what end? The Declaration of Independence had declared that all men are created equal … It is not a declaration of equality of property, bodily strength or beauty, intellectually or moral development, industrial or inventive powers, but equality of RIGHTS–not of one race, but of all races.

—Massachussets Historical Society, July 2005

We have proved recreant to our own faith, false to our own standard, treacherous to the trust committed to our hands; so that, instead of helping to extend the blessings of freedom, we have mightily served the cause of tyranny throughout the world. Garrison then spoke about the prospects for the success of the revolutionary spirit within the nation, prospects he regarded as dismal because of the insatiable greed, boundless rapacity, and profligate disregard of justice prevalent at the time. He concluded his speech by asserting, Such is our condition, such are our prospects, as a people, on the 4th of July, 1854! Setting aside his manuscript, he told the assembly that he should now proceed to perform an action which would be the testimony of his own soul to all present, of the estimation in which he held the pro-slavery laws and deeds of the nation …

— from Thoreau: Lecture 43, 4 July, 1854

Producing a copy of the Fugitive Slave Law, he set fire to it, and it burst to ashes. Using an old and well-known phrase, he said, And let all the people say, Amen; and a unanimous cheer and shout of Amen burst from the vast audience. In like manner, Mr. Garrison burned the decision of Edward G. Loring in the case of Anthony Burns, and the late charge of Judge Benjamin R. Curtis to the United States Grand Jury in reference to the treasonable assault upon the Court House for the rescue of the fugitive–the multitude ratifying the fiery immolation with shouts of applause. Then holding up the U.S. Constitution, he branded it as the source and parent of all the other atrocities,–“a covenant with death, and an agreement with hell,”–and consumed it to ashes on the spot, exclaiming, So perish all compromises with tyranny! And let all the people say, Amen! A tremendous shout of Amen! went up to heaven in ratification of the deed, mingled with a few hisses and wrathful exclamations from some who were evidently in a rowdyish state of mind, but who were at once cowed by the popular feeling.

–from The Liberator, 7 July 1854 (boldface added)

As I said last year:

I think that legalism is an insidious error that liberals and libertarians alike are all too prone to fall into. In fact the rule of law is something to be hoped for only insofar as the laws are just: rigorously enforcing a wicked law–even if that law is duly published and generally formulated–is just relentlessness, not virtue. And in our bloodstained age it is as obvious as anything that many laws are very far from being just. But one way of trying to accomodate this point, while entirely missing it, is to throw your weight behind some Super-Duper Law that is supposed to condemn the little-bitty laws that you consider unjustifiable. Besides taking the focus away from creative extremism and direct action, and leaving power in the hands of government-appointed conspiracies of old white dudes in black robes, this strategy also amounts to little more than a stinking red herring. It diverts the inquiry from the obvious injustices of a State that systematically robs, swindles, extorts, censors, proscribes, beats, cuffs, jails, exiles, murders, bombs, burns, starves countless innocent people in the name of its compelling State interests, and puts the focus the powers that are or are not delegated to the government by another damn written law. As if the contents of that law had any more right to preempt considerations of justice than the subordinate laws supposedly enacted under its authority. Those who have spent their days trying to find a lost Constitution under the sofa cushions are engaged in a massive, sophisticated, intricately argued irrelevancy. I’d compare it to debating how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, but that would be grossly unfair–to Scholastic metaphysicians.

— GT 2006-09-17: International Ignore the Constitution Day festivities

And as I said in my first annual Ignore the Constitution oration:

You, too, can celebrate Ignore the Constitution Day! Today, completely ignore all claims to authority granted in the Constitution. Live your life as if the Constitution had no more claim on you than the decrees of Emperor Norton. Enjoy your rights under natural law; you have them whether or not the Constitution says one mumbling word for them. While you’re at it, treat the Constitution as completely irrelevant in political arguments too; instead of complaining that unbridled war powers for the President are unconstitutional, for example, complain that they are evil; instead of reciting that damn Davy Crocket bed-time story again and complaining that government-controlled disaster relief is unconstitutional, complain that government-controlled disaster relief is foolish and deadly. (If the Constitution clearly authorized unilateral war powers for the President, or abusive and incompetant government-controlled disaster relief, would that make it okay?) And, hell, while you’re at it, quit complaining that forced Constitution Day celebrations may be unconstitutional; complain instead that they force children to participate in cultish praise for the written record of a naked usurpation.

Just go ahead. Ignore the Constitution for a day. See what happens. Who’s it gonna hurt? And if your political reasoning becomes sharper, your discourse no longer bogs down in a bunch of pseudo-legal mummeries, and you have a pleasant day without having to ask anybody’s permission for it, then I suggest you continue the celebration, tomorrow, and every day thereafter.

— GT 2005-09-17: International Ignore the Constitution Day

Celebrations elsewhere:

• Kehlkopfmikrofon 2007-09-16: The Constitution of No Authority

Further reading:

• GT 2007-09-06: Marching orders
• GT 2007-06-23: The Show Pony
• GT 2006-04-09: Freedom Movement Celebrity Deathmatch
• GT 2006-01-05: An Open Question for Constitutionalist Liberals
• GT 2005-09-02: Definition 2
• GT 2005-07-04: Burn, baby, burn
• GT 2005-12-15: Bill of Rights Day festivities
• No Treason! 2005-12-11: Bush gets it right

It vill not be difficult, mein F?@c3;bc;hrer…

Michael Chertoff, the top creep at the Comittee of Public Safety, thinks that you and I are not sacrificing enough for our own good. And it’s getting on his very last nerve:

Such opposition [to new border control programs] ranges from Texas ranchers who don’t want border fences built on their property to northern border-state residents who don’t want to get passports to cross back-and-forth between Canada and the USA. Chertoff says he is frustrated by the growing number of people who say, Yes, protect us, but not if it inconveniences me.

But don’t worry. Chertoff will make sure the government protects the hell out of you, anyway. And you’re going to like it, too.

In an interview shortly before the sixth anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Chertoff said he considers it one of his biggest obligations in his remaining 16 months in office to eliminate the not-in-my-backyard attitude when it comes to relatively small costs and inconveniences.

And don’t you worry. Michael Chertoff will find that all the costs and inconveniences of national identification papers, a border wall, new passport requirements, deliberate intimidation of employers by La Migra, etc. are relatively small.

Tim Roemer, a member of the 9/11 Commission, said President Bush should help Chertoff better inform the public about new security programs designed to keep terrorists out of the country.

The average citizen needs to know more about what to do to stop these people, Roemer said.

Chertoff says he worries that the public is suffering fatigue after six years of counterterrorism efforts abroad and at home.

— USA Today (2007-09-06): Chertoff: Security requires sacrifice

And there’ll be no security fatigue in Chertoff’s command–that’s an order. You’d better fall in, soldier.

Perhaps if the people who are actually affected by the costs and inconveniences Michael Chertoff’s so-called security policies are not as enthusiastic as Michael Chertoff is about those policies, he should reconsider his efforts to protect them against their will.

(Story thanks to Wolfesblog 2007-09-06: Chertoff says we’re not sacrificing enough.)

Further reading:

• GT 2006-12-04: In five words or fewer #2: Michael McHale on the 50-shot police murder of Sean Bell
• GT 2006-05-11: Quidditative essence

Last week I posted about this recent case in Oregon, in which the narcs — bullies by profession and liars by trade — decided to seize some evidence of drug sales between consenting adults, without a warrant, by ramming a car and then stealing it off the street:

In a strongly worded order last year, U.S. District Court Judge Robert Whaley tossed out evidence seized from a car driven by Ascencion Alverez-Tejeda, charged with three felony counts of distributing cocaine and methamphetamine in Eastern Washington for a Mexican drug ring.

On June 8, a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overruled Whaley, ruling that the search was legal but expressing reservations about the ruse used by the region’s Drug Enforcement Agency.

The case includes grand jury testimony that DEA agents have used similar tactics on other occasions — raising questions by judges and defense lawyers about how far law enforcement officers can go to mislead suspects and act without a warrant. The DEA, which waited three days after the seizure to get a search warrant, is defending the conduct of its agents.

In his April 2006 order, Whaley said the DEA engaged in shocking and outrageous conduct and committed criminal acts against Alverez-Tejeda, 35, who was living in Irrigon, Ore., and Diana Maria Volerio-Perez, his 30-year old girlfriend, when they were detained and searched without a warrant on Dec. 18, 2004.

In that incident, DEA agents staged a car accident near Redmond, Ore., ran a truck into the car Alverez-Tejeda was driving, pretended to be Deschutes County Sheriff’s deputies and drove off at high speed in Alverez-Tejeda’s car while falsely telling him it had just been randomly stolen.

As a result of the bogus theft of their car, the couple became victims of a crime, Whaley said.

The agents’ actions violated the Fourth Amendment and so tainted the case that drug evidence — two kilograms of cocaine and three pounds of methamphetamine — later found in the car should be suppressed, Whaley said.

U.S. Attorney James McDevitt filed an appeal on May 5, 2006, which stayed the case until the ruling earlier this month.

Now that the 9th Circuit has overturned Whaley’s order, a trial for Alverez-Tejeda will be scheduled.

— Karen Dorn Steele and Kevin Graman, The Spokesman-Review (2007-06-18): Appeals court upholds DEA ruse

The Spokesman-Review story has a lot more on the details of the case. I mention it here, though, because it alerted me to this:

In oral arguments in Seattle in April, a three-judge panel of 9th Circuit judges peppered U.S. Attorney Russell Smoot of Spokane with questions as he argued that the agents’ tactics were reasonable.

This is the Keystone Cops case, said 9th District Circuit Judge Alex Kozinski, calling the agents’ ruse a hairbrained scheme.

But Kozinski, writing for the panel, said the ruse was not unconstitutional.

The agents’ actions were reasonable in light of their vital interest in seizing the drugs and not exposing their investigation, Kozinski wrote.

— Karen Dorn Steele and Kevin Graman, The Spokesman-Review (2007-06-18): Appeals court upholds DEA ruse

Please note that the author of the majority opinion here is Judge Alex Kozinski. When he’s not busy writing opinions giving the narcs King’s X to cause auto collisions, impersonate local police officers, use their assistance to collision victims as a pretext for stealing cars, and all without a warrant of any kind, Judge Kozinski gives interviews to Reason magazine, who described him, not so long ago, as one of the most libertarian judges in the country.

Were you counting on the courts to uphold even minimal protections for civil liberties? Don’t.