ACS Weekend News Round-up 10/15/2007
News In Brief
- FEC hearing to determine election and issue advertising limits
- Justice Department accused of partisan voter-roll purge
- Former CEO says government punished company for refusing pre-9/11 NSA spying program
- Private security contractors as “unlawful combatants”
- High proportion of “interim” heads in Justice Department
- “Patchwork” state immigration laws pose future obstacles
- ACLU documents show expanded military role in national security letters
- “When Does Pregnancy Begin?”: Sherry Colb article
- Security letters aimed at Pentagon employees
- Temporary “tent city” for Guantanamo tribunals
FEC hearing to determine election and issue advertising limits
The Federal Election Commission will hold a meeting on October 17 to determine just how free corporations and unions will be to speak around election time, Broadcasting and Cable reported. “At the session, the FEC will hear from stakeholders as it tries to square rules about TV and radio issue ads with the 'Wisconsin Right to Life Case' Supreme Court decision last summer.”
Justice Department Accused of Partisan Voter-Roll Purge
Voting-rights advocates say that the Justice Department pursued a partisan effort to limit the number of voters, while ignoring measures designed to get more voters on the rolls, NPR reported.
“A former Qwest Communications International executive, appealing a conviction for insider trading, has alleged that the government withdrew opportunities for contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars after Qwest refused to participate in an unidentified National Security Agency program that the company thought might be illegal,” the Washington Post reported on Saturday. “Naccio’s account…suggests that the Bush administration was seeking to enlist telecommunications firms in programs without court oversight before the terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon." Glenn Greenwald wrote an opinion piece about the situation, entitled: “Telecom Amnesty would forever foreclose investigation of vital issues.”
Could private security contractors be considered “unlawful combatants”?
Some officials are asking whether privacy security contractors could be considered unlawful combatants under international agreements, the LA Times reported. If officials do conclude that the use of guards is a potential violation of international law, they “may have to limit guards' tasks in war zones, which could leave more work for the already overstretched military.”
High proportion of “interim” heads in Justice Department
More than a quarter of the Justice Department’s 93 United States attorneys around the country are “acting,” reported the New York Times today. “With only 15 months left in office, President Bush has left whole agencies of the executive branch to be run largely by acting or interim appointees — jobs that would normally be filled by people whose nominations would have been reviewed and confirmed by the Senate.” Paul Light, a professor at New York University, said: “In my 25 years of studying these issues, I’ve never seen a vacancy rate like this.”
“Patchwork” state immigration laws pose future obstacles
The Washington Post examined the recent increase in immigration laws passed by states. 182 bills were passed in 43 different states during the first half of 2007, more than double the number of immigration-related state laws during all of 2006. Some observers says the widely divergent laws could pose new hurdles in reaching a national consensus on immigration, reported the Post.
ACLU Documents Show Expanded Military Role in National Security Letters
The ACLU has obtained a new set of documents showing the military's expanded role since the passage of the Patriot Act in obtaining national security letters.
“When Does Pregnancy Begin?”: Sherry Colb article
Sherry F. Colb, professor of law at Rutgers Law School, wrote an article entitled: When Does Pregnancy Begin?: A Federal Appeals Court Decision Implicates a New Abortion Question, discussing a recent case that was dismissed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit involving a 16-year-old girl who was given the morning-after pill. Colb writes, “To the extent that the U.S. Supreme Court has become more receptive to government restrictions of abortion, the official point at which pregnancy begins could prove crucial in defining the scope of women's continuing reproductive autonomy.”
Security letters aimed at Pentagon employees
NPR reports on an ACLU statement alleging since 2002, the Pentagon and FBI have issued 455 "national security letters" aimed at people who were employed by the Defense Department, but suspected of links to terrorism." National Security Letters allow data to be collected without a court order.
Temporary “tent city” for Guantanamo tribunals
Instead of building a $125-million permanent judicial center, the DoD will instead built “a complex of canvas Quonset huts arrayed like dominoes" as part of an "Expeditionary Legal Complex” constructed for the war-crimes tribunals of the Guantanamo detainees, said the L.A. Times. This “reflects the shrinking mission of the controversial procedures created by the Military Commissions Act of 2006,” according to the article.