Civil Rights

My parents don't subscribe to the L.A. Times like the rest of our civilized metropolis, but rather to the Daily News, which is a more "fair and balanced" newspaper, if you catch my meaning. As such, I usually try to avoid reading the paper while I'm home, but some mornings when I sit down at the table with my Apple Jacks™, I really need something to look at.

This morning I read that a Cornell University study showed that 44% of "Americans" favor curbing the civil rights of all Muslim Americans. I couldn't find the article on the Daily News website (which seems to be on par with the physical paper in terms of quality), but it's an AP piece, so here it is on USAToday.

The survey conducted by Cornell University also found that Republicans and people who described themselves as highly religious were more apt to support curtailing Muslims' civil liberties than Democrats or people who are less religious.

The Boston Globe has a story about how Police are beginning searches of buses leaving the Londonderry, NH Concord Trailways station. If my understanding (based on the article) of this situation is correct, I have no problem with it whatsoever although I still object to the "random" searches on Boston's MBTA trains and buses.

First of all, Concord Trailways is a private company which runs a transportation service on private property (buses). Based on this article, it seems that the company is voluntarily complying with a police wish the search buses. Passengers who refuse to be searched are refused a seat. Since we're talking about a private company, I have no problem with that.

In what is at least a partial victory for the rule of law and decency against George W. Bush, the Supreme Court ruled today that the Bush administration cannot deny terrorism suspects access to the legal system by labling them "enemy combatants" (ABCNews).

This is good news for the detainees in Cuba, as I don't doubt that many are innocent, but also good news for U.S. citizens, whom the Bush administration wants to trample:

The administration also must take extra precautions when it apprehends U.S. citizens and accuses them of being combatants. Those citizens are entitled to some rights like traditional criminal suspects.

So far, I have been too lazy to read the ruling in its entirety, but I would hope that this would mean that it is no longer legal for the government to secretly kidnap U.S. citizens without charging them or informing anyone of their whereabouts.

Which, you know, sounds like a step forward to me.

Boston civil rights groups are planning to file a lawsuit to stop the "T" from instituting a policy that would require riders to be subject to searches (Boston Globe).

"Public transportation is a community resource that should be available to everybody without requiring people to sacrifice their constitutional rights in order to use it," said Michael Avery, president of the Massachusetts chapter of the National Lawyers Guild.

I am wholeheartedly against the search policy that the MBTA wants to implement. For a while, I have been thinking about how I would deal with it if they tried to search me. I realize that I'm a young, clean-looking white person, and the odds that I would be searched (MBTA claims it's random -- I don't believe that it can be) approach zero. But just because it probably won't affect me, doesn't mean that I can let it happen.

I've written a lot about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the past few weeks. There are a thousand reasons why it's worthy of interest, study and thought, but my reasons are very specific.

Looking at both Israeli and American politics, I see a real potential for the erosion of democracy and individual liberties. Indeed, it has already begun. For sure, there are many countries across the globe that are much worse. They are ruled by dictators and oppress their people. This is indeed horrible. I choose to focus on Israel and America because both countries are backward-sliding democracies. In a previous post today, I mentioned that a poll done in Israel showed that almost half of respondents thought that Israeli Arabs should be denied voting rights. In America, we don't have to look beyond the USA PATRIOT act to see individual liberties and constitutionally guaranteed freedoms being diminished.