civil liberties

• 
• SOURCE: Reason
  1/13/2021
  

  Reviving Sedition Prosecutions Would Be a Tragic Mistake

  by David Beito

  A libertarian historian argues that the use of sedition law to charge participants in the Capitol riots would revive a dangerous pattern of prosecuting ideology instead of action, one which those on the left should also treat with suspicion. 

• 
• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  12/3/2020
  

  A Lesser-Known Trump Immigration Policy Needs Biden’s Attention

  by Smita Ghosh

  Biden should reverse the Trump policy of using "expedited removal" to deport migrants without a hearing, which is part of a historical pattern of deportation programs that harm communities, separate families, and sometimes result in legal residents being expelled from the United States.

• 
• SOURCE: CNN
  11/2/2020
  

  Supreme Court Rules in Favor of Black Lives Matter Organizer

  "The Supreme Court has long recognized that peaceful protesters cannot be held liable for the unintended, unlawful actions of others," said American Civil Liberties Union National Legal Director David Cole.

• 
• SOURCE: Mother Jones
  10/29/2020
  

  The Dossier That Destroyed Frank Wilkinson’s Dream of Public Housing in LA

  by Eric Nusbaum

  Frank Wilkinson's advocacy for racially integrated public housing in Los Angeles set off a red-baiting campaign that landed him in prison. 

• 
• SOURCE: Slate
  8/4/2020
  

  The Police Lie. All the Time. Can Anything Stop Them?

  A 1961 Supreme Court ruling establishing the Exclusionary Rule--that evidence obtained illegally is inadmissible in trial--spurred a host of police practices to circumvent the rule, most involving lying in reports about the circumstances of a search or arrest.

• 
• SOURCE: NBC News
  7/19/2020
  

  The Holocaust Survivor Hoping To Change American Police Culture

  Psychologist Ervin Staub has pioneered active bystander training to limit violence between police and the public.

• 
• SOURCE: ProPublica
  6/9/2020
  

  The Police Have Been Spying on Black Reporters and Activists for Years. I Know Because I’m One of Them.

  by Wendi C. Thomas

  Wendi C. Thomas is a black journalist who has covered police in Memphis. One officer admitted to spying on her. She’s on a long list of prominent black journalists and activists who have been subjected to police surveillance over decades.

• 
• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  June 2
  

  Trump’s Grotesque Violation of the First Amendment

  by Garrett Epps

  The people own the streets—not the police, not the military, and not Donald Trump.

• 
• 4/5/2020
  

  US v. Sineneng-Smith Echoes the Fugitive Slave Act

  by Alan J. Singer

  A Supreme Court decision in United States v. Sineneng-Smith that broadens the authority of the federal government to suppress the rights of advocates for undocumented immigrants could divide the nation irreparably.

• 
• SOURCE: Quartz
  4/1/2020
  

  The US Government Has a Long History of Using Crises to Justify Indefinite Mass Detention

  Governments, both federal and local, are already flirting with emergency powers to fight the spread of coronavirus that contravene the rights residents normally take for granted.

• 
• SOURCE: TomDispatch
  3/26/2020
  

  Judgment Day for the National Security State

  by Andrew Bacevich

  Deferred for far too long, Judgment Day may at long last have arrived for the national security state.

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  3/16/2020
  

  How the Coronavirus Could Trigger a Backslide on Freedom Around the World

  by Allie Funk and Isabel Linzer

  Authorities worldwide are using the coronavirus as a pretext to crack down on human rights for political purposes. 

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  5/15/19
  

  Why we can — and must — create a fairer system of traffic enforcement

  by Sarah A. Seo

  Its discretionary nature has left it ripe for abuse.

• 
• SOURCE: WSJ
  2-5-18
  

  David J. Garrow, who exposed abuses by the FBI under Hoover, warns that liberals are blind to today’s civil liberties violations

  by David J. Garrow

  In an op ed in the Wall Street Journal he argues that the FBI surveillance of Carter Page is comparable to the Bureau’s wiretapping of MLK.

• 
• 1-8-17
  

  While You Weren’t Looking, the FBI Acquired the Power to Spy on You

  by Suzy Evans

  Once again security concerns are overriding civil liberties.

• 
• SOURCE: Petition
  12-13-16
  

  1200 Historians and other scholars say they are alarmed by threats to civil liberties

  They have signed a petition posted online to protest trends that remind them of the worst abuses in the past – Japanese internment, among others.

• 
• SOURCE: Jewish Journal
  11-22-16
  

  Jewish historian’s anti-Trump statement goes viral

  More than 240 Jewish studies scholars have signed a public statementthat warns against the threat to minorities posed by the election of Donald Trump.

• 
• 6-19-16
  

  Can You Indict Someone for Their Beliefs? It Happened in 1948. In the United States.

  by Aaron Leonard

  In this interview author Scott Martelle explains what happened and why he decided to write about the case.

• 
• 11-16-14
  

  Do Wars Really Defend America’s Freedom?

  by Lawrence S. Wittner

  U.S. politicians and pundits are fond of saying that America’s wars have defended America’s freedom. But the historical record doesn’t bear out this contention.

• SOURCE: NYTimes eXaminer
  7-18-13
  

  Murray Polner: “Where Were You Last Night at 7? Speak Up!”

  Murray Polner is a regular book reviewer for the History News Network. His column “Keeping Score” appears here fairly regularly.I always loved that great New Yorker cartoon, which has a President ordering his assistant, “Leak to the press that my Administration won’t stand for any more leaks.”How relevant. As our Big Media endlessly reports on the sheriff and his posse’s relentless pursuit of Edward Snowden, and while Pfc. Bradley Manning sits in a military court awaiting a probable guilty verdict, he and Snowden may, sadly, prove to be small fry in the long run, forgotten as the years pass as they languish in a federal prison.Now, with no thanks to Big Media and TV’s sycophantic network news programs, the Obama Administration has something new and more odious to offer—its Insider Threat Program, which the President signed into law in October 2011 and, I believe, was first revealed in depth last June by the McClatchy Newspapers’ Marisa Taylor and the intrepid Jonathan Landay’s “Obama’s Plan to Crack Down on Whistleblowers Leaked.” Widely overlooked except by the leftist Nation, Truth-out and a handful of bloggers, what Taylor and Landay reported was, to put it conservatively, potentially “game changing.”