Photography Is Not a Crime, Despite States' Best Efforts to Make it One

This is an issue that's been around for a while, but only in the last year has it really started to pick up incredible steam. A Gizmodo post from earlier this summer, titled "Are Cameras the new guns", has made the rounds, bringing a little more attention to the issue.

In response to a flood of Facebook and YouTube videos that depict police abuse, a new trend in law enforcement is gaining popularity. In at least three states, it is now illegal to record any on-duty police officer.

The post refers to Illinois, Maryland and Massachusetts, where people have been convicted for recording police officers on duty. These were not arrests for surreptitiously recording cops either, we're talking video cameras in hand, recording their own arrest, or their loved ones'. The very idea that it could be a crime to record cops acting out in the open, where there is no "expectation of privacy" (the relevant legal term), while they are speaking at a volume that is naturally audible, is so absurd it defies words.

The Court Dabbles in Terrorist McCarthyism

Today the Court came down with a decision in Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project. A lot of writing will be done in the next few days about how this decision distorted the First Amendment's doctrine, so I figured I'd jump in the fray. First, the Times Editorial's synopsis (because they did it for me, so why write my own?):

The case arose after an American human rights group, the Humanitarian Law Project, challenged the law prohibiting “material support” to terror groups, which was defined in the 2001 Patriot Act to include “expert advice or assistance.” The law project wanted to provide advice to two terrorist groups on how to peacefully resolve their disputes and work with the United Nations. The two groups — the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party — have violent histories and their presence on the State Department’s official list of terrorist groups is not in dispute.

But though the law project was actually trying to reduce the violence of the two groups, the court’s opinion, written by Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. on behalf of five other justices, said that did not matter and ruled the project’s efforts illegal. Even peaceful assistance to a terror group can further terrorism, the chief justice wrote, in part by lending them legitimacy and allowing them to pretend to be negotiating while plotting violence.

That's pretty perverse. Talking to terrorist groups, giving them legal advice, is now material support and thus illegal. The Court premised this on the old argument that money is fungible so aiding one section of a group (the humanitarian/political vs. the terrorist) is aiding all the others. While this argument is not obviously true with money (see, e.g., the US tax code, which separates the political non-profits from the apolitical, even if they're the same people), the Court then expanded it saying that by teaching them how to navigate the legal system or to act politically to achieve their goals rather than violently, a person is freeing up resources that the group would have used to now be used on terror. This just makes no sense. If they're acting as a terror group, they're never going to spend resources on teaching themselves how to act peacefully, so someone convincing them to do so is adding a service - it's not all zero sum.

Updated Constitution-Free Zone

Absurd immigration and national security laws are not new, but Arizona's is just more blatant than most. The ACLU already had a map of the "Constitution-Free Zone" within 100 miles of any border. A redditor just updated it to reflect SB1070. Much more accurate.

(Original here.)

Arizona's Racist, But Minnesota's Like Your Loopy Crazy Uncle

I'm amused. This week, we thought Arizona had the unconstitutionally crazy achievement award. But we might have to limit that state to the unconstitutionally racist award, because Minnesota just threw in its bid for the crazy award.

Senate Republicans introduced a constitutional amendment Wednesday that would make Minnesota the first state to require a two-thirds majority vote in the legislature to approve federal laws affecting the state. “Minnesotans enjoy inherent, natural, God-given rights,” the bill states, and “Citizens of Minnesota are sovereign individuals, subject to Minnesota law and immune from any federal laws that exceed the federal government’s enumerated constitutional powers.”

Good luck with that.

(via The Debate Link)

Dennis in Wonderland

Dennis Kucinich is the only Congressperson that stayed out of the rabbit hole. Why is he the only one calling the administration out on this? The subtitle of the article says it all:

Rep. Dennis Kucinich warns that the assassination program means the U.S. government acts as the "investigator, policeman, prosecutor, judge, jury, executioner all in one."

Obama Puts a Hit Out on a US Citizen He Says is a Terrorist

(Updated below)

I'm exhausted. Too exhausted to muster up my typical righteous anger about this issue, so I'll just send you along to Glenn Greenwald, who has plenty.

Not really sure there's a money quote, so just read the thing, but here's a sample: