LA TIMES– Acting Solicitor Gen. Neal Katyal, in an extraordinary admission of misconduct, took to task one of his predecessors for hiding evidence and deceiving the Supreme Court in two of the major cases in its history: the World War II rulings that upheld the detention of more than 110,000 Japanese Americans.

Katyal said Tuesday that Charles Fahy, an appointee of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, deliberately hid from the court a report from the Office of Naval Intelligence that concluded the Japanese Americans on the West Coast did not pose a military threat. The report indicated there was no evidence Japanese Americans were disloyal, were acting as spies or were signaling enemy submarines, as some at the time had suggested.

Fahy was defending Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066, which authorized forced removals of Japanese Americans from “military areas” in 1942. The solicitor general, the U.S. government’s top courtroom attorney, is viewed as the most important and trusted lawyer to appear before the Supreme Court, and Katyal said he had a “duty of absolute candor in our representations to the court.”

Read full article about Misconduct Cited in Japanese American Internment Cases.

© 2011 LA TIMES

Photo by flickr user Jonvoss

HUFFINGTON POST– Since President Obama was inaugurated, there have been over 2,600 arrests of activists protesting in the U.S.. Research shows over 670 people have been arrested in protests inside the U.S. already in 2011, over 1,290 were arrested in 2010, and 665 arrested in 2009. These figures certainly underestimate the number actually arrested, as arrests in U.S. protests are rarely covered by the mainstream media outlets which focus so intently on arrests of protestors in other countries.

Arrests at protest have been increasing each year since 2009. Those arrested include people protesting U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Guantanamo, strip mining, home foreclosures, nuclear weapons, immigration policies, police brutality, mistreatment of hotel workers, budget cutbacks, Blackwater, the mistreatment of Bradley Manning, and right wing efforts to cut back collective bargaining.

These arrests illustrate that resistance to the injustices in and committed by the U.S. is alive and well. Certainly there could and should be more, but it is important to recognize that people are fighting back against injustice.

Information on these arrests has been taken primarily from the newsletter The Nuclear Resister, which has been publishing reports of anti-nuclear resistance arrests since 1980, and anti-war actions since 1990.

Jack Cohen-Joppa, who with his partner Felice, edits The Nuclear Resister, told me:

Over the last three decades, in the course of chronicling more than 100,000 arrests for nonviolent protest and resistance to nuclear power, nuclear weapons, torture, and war, we’ve noted a quadrennial decline as support for protest and resistance gets swallowed up by Presidential politicking. It has taken a couple of years, but the Hopeium addicts of 2008 are finally getting into recovery. We’re again reporting a steady if slow rise in the numbers willing to risk arrest and imprisonment for acts of civil resistance. Today, for instance, there are more Americans serving time in prison for nuclear weapons protest than at any time in more than a decade.

Read full article about Two Thousand Six Hundred Activists Arrested in U.S. Protests.

Article written by Bill Quigley

© 2011 Huffington Post

Photo by Flickr user hozinja

CARE2– With bi-partisan opposition to key provisions of the Patriot Act, you would think that now would be the time to move to take back American civil liberties once and for all.

You would be wrong.

With a week until the provisions expire, Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) and Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) made a deal to reauthorize the Act for four more years.  Doing so avoids a messy and extended debate over the extension and a potentially humiliating defeat for both the White House and members of Congress who have continued to give the measure support through two administrations.

The move takes back a promise made by Sen. Reid for a full week of debate and consideration before an extension and, by its backroom nature, shows that even a transparent debate on the matter is no longer a possibility in Washington.

If the Tea Party Republicans are serious about shrinking the size of the federal government and really are libertarians then we should find out soon.  Since its enactment the Patriot Act has resulted in the widespread abuse of the use of National Security Letters by the FBI to secretly spy on innocent Americans and has produced no discernible national security benefit.

Read more about Backroom Deal Set To Extend Patriot Act

© 2011 Care2

Photo by Flickr user dad_and_clint

Lifting the Veil: Obama and the Failure of Capitalist Democracy

This film explores the historical role of the Democratic Party as the “graveyard of social movements”, the massive influence of corporate finance in elections, the absurd disparities of wealth in the United States, the continuity and escalation of neocon policies under Obama, the insufficiency of mere voting as a path to reform, and differing conceptions of democracy itself.

Original interview footage derives from Noam Chomsky, Michael Parenti, Michael Albert, John Stauber (PR Watch), Sharon Smith (Historian), William I. Robinson (Editor, Critical Globalization Studies), Morris Berman (Author, Dark Ages America), and famed black panther Larry Pinkney.

Non-original interviews/lectures include Michael Hudson, Paul Craig Roberts, Ted Rall, Richard Wolff, Glen Ford, Lewis Black, Glenn Greenwald, George Carlin, Gerald Cliente, Chris Hedges, John Pilger, Bernie Sanders, Sheldon Wollin and Martin Luther King.

“Lifting the Veil is the long overdue film that powerfully, definitively, and finally exposes the deadly 21st century hypocrisy of U.S. internal and external policies, even as it imbues the viewer with a sense of urgency and an actualized hope to bring about real systemic change while there is yet time for humanity and this planet. See this film!” – Larry Pinkney – Editorial Board Member & Columnist – The Black Commentator

Viewer discretion advised – Video contains images depicting the reality and horror of war.

Visit http://metanoia-films.org/compilations.php for more info.

Photo by flickr user MCS

SEATTLE TIMES– The Supreme Court on Monday gave police more leeway to break into homes or apartments in search of illegal drugs when they suspect the evidence might be destroyed.

The justices said officers who smell marijuana and loudly knock on the door may break in if they hear sounds that suggest the residents are scurrying to hide the drugs.

Residents who “attempt to destroy evidence have only themselves to blame” when police burst in, Justice Samuel Alito said for an 8-1 majority.

In dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote that she feared the ruling in a Kentucky case had handed the police an important new tool.

“The court today arms the police with a way routinely to dishonor the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement in drug cases,” Ginsburg wrote. “In lieu of presenting their evidence to a neutral magistrate, police officers may now knock, listen, then break the door down, never mind that they had ample time to obtain a warrant.”

She said the Fourth Amendment’s “core requirement” is that officers have probable cause and a search warrant before they break into a house.

“How ‘secure’ do our homes remain if police, armed with no warrant, can pound on doors at will and … forcibly enter?” Ginsburg asked.

An expert on criminal searches agreed, saying the decision would encourage police to undertake “knock and talk” raids.

Read full article about Supreme Court OKs Warrantless Searches.

© 2011 Seattle Times

Photo by Abby Martin