War on Terrorism

Saudi Flight: Yes or No

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A couple weeks ago I complained about the reported post 9/11 Saudi escape plane that might have been flying while US airports were locked down.
The final story is not yet in on this but Brendan Nyhan at Spinsanity suggests that the best available evidence indicates that the flight(s) actually did not leave the US until after the airports were open again. However, there still appear to be a few things to clear up:

1) What was the actual departure timeline? There appears to be no solid evidence of dates/times.
2) There may have been an incoming flight and/or a taxi flight (picking up folks) that occurred during the lockdown. What are the details?
3) Why were these folks allowed to leave the country in the first place? Seems like they would have been perfectly good candidates to spend some time in ashcroft’s gulag.

The administration needs to take the classified stamp off of information related to this event and tell the full story (with documentation). As I said two weeks ago, hopefully there is no truth to any of this.
Via Hit and Run.

ashcroft on NPR

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NPR did a segment today on ashcroft’s Patriot Act tour. He sounds just like Lis describes him:

Ashcroft came across so smug and smarmy that I had a fingernails across the blackboard reaction and may have yelled back at the radio.

You can find the audio links at NPR (down toward the bottom….and you might want to listen to the preceding music button after the ashcroft segment to relax a bit) or go directly to the recording: WM……RA.

More CAPPS II

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Barry Steinhardt, director of the ACLU’s Program on Technology and Liberty, summed up CAPPs II thusly:

CAPPS II would for the first time put the government in the business of conducting regular background checks on everyday citizens. Not only would the government conduct searches and evaluations of individuals’ past history and records, but it would generate a “risk score” for each person. The social and political consequences of this new role for government are far-reaching and truly frightening.

Read the transcript of the Washington Post online forum he participated in here.
Via beSpacific.

Where is the Foreign Aid

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Gwynn Dyer suggests the real reason many countries are responding slowly to bush’s ‘plea’ for help with Iraq:

Nobody talks openly about this, but many governments are also privately debating whether they want to help save the Bush administration from the consequences of its own folly.
Without a lot of military and financial help that can only come via the UN, Bush may be dragged down to defeat by the Iraq war in the November 2004 election. With the extra troops and money, he might contain the problem enough to survive. But, they ask themselves, do we really want that?

xymphora enumerates five additional reasons.

Patriot Act II or?

This entry was posted in bush Constitution Domestic Terrorism Drug Laws Law Libertarianism Patriot Act War on Terrorism on by

Whatever it is going to be called bush is stumping for it. At Quanitco today, he made a pitch for increased use of administrative supoenas, elimination of bail for terrorist suspects and additional death penalty provisions. Part of his rationale being something like if we can have these things for certain other crimes why not terrorism. For instance, with regard to administrative supoenas:

They’re used in a wide range of criminal and civil matters, including health care fraud and child abuse cases.

Perhaps they shouldn’t be used in any situation. It strikes me that probably cause approved by a judge ought to be the minimum standard.
I don’t think anyone outside bush’s cabal has seen what they plan to send to congress. Expect things to go less well for whatever it is then the roll over and play dead act that congress did for Patriot Act 1.
Talkleft (and I’m sure others) has been working this heavily. See here (the most recent as of this writing) and previous posts.