Can you fly without ID? According to what the government told the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in the Gilmore case, you can – you need only submit to secondary screening in order to fly anonymously.

Please try doing some or all of your travel by declining to show ID and report back about what happens to you.

If you have some time on your hands and some big ass balls in your pants there is a significant legal issue here you can contribute to. All you have to do is go to an airport and try to get on a plane without showing ID. They aren't supposed to arrest you for trying this...

You ought to be able to travel freely without identifying yourself to the government. Totalitarian regimes have used secret laws in the past to control the free association of people. I'm sure that these travel restrictions were limited to the necessary protection of the national security interests of their respective states. Subversive people associating with eachother is a national security issue. We presently have a secret list of subversive people who are prohibited from flying and an ID requirement for flight. Is this list being abused? Who is on the list? Why are people put on the list? Almost nobody knows.

The 9th circuit is saying that its really not a problem because there really is no ID requirement and you can just get on planes so long as you are willing to allow them to search you for weapons. I had no idea! I'll bet TSA's agents don't know this either.

TSA cannot sit in court and say you don't need an ID to fly, and then put signs all over airports saying that you do need ID to fly and refuse to let people fly without ID. They either need to defend their ID requirement in court or actually not have one.

If you can't get on a plane without showing ID, TSA is lying.

Can you really fly without showing ID?

First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season."

This is probably more interesting, and timely, then Gore's speech.

Martin Luther King - Letter from Birmingham Jail

One judge, speaking on the condition of anonymity, also said members could suggest disbanding the court in light of the president's suggestion that he has the power to bypass the court.

Judges on Surveillance Court To Be Briefed on Spy Program

Was the secret NSA surveillance program legal? Was it constitutional? Did it violate federal statutory law? It turns out these are hard questions, but I wanted to try my best to answer them. My answer is pretty tentative, but here it goes: Although it hinges somewhat on technical details we don't know, it seems that the program was probably constitutional but probably violated the federal law known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

This is a detailed analysis. The Administration's Position is also available.

Legal Analysis of the NSA surveillance program

Letter from Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) to Vice President Cheney regarding NSA domestic wiretapping, July 17th 2003.

Bush's Congressional oversight concerning whatever the hell the NSA has been up to included breifing Rockefeller, who just leaked this memo (which was obviously kept around as an insurance policy in the event this went public). Unlike other observers, I'm not at all suprised that this stuff was both technically and legally over his head. I could build some really bad ass snooping tools if I had an unlimited budget, and all this stuff about Article II and the AUFM is about as clear as mud.

The Talking Points Memo DOCUMENT COLLECTION

This is clearly intended to be a scare story. I'm sure, lots of information was left out - especially about his 'time abroad' and other associations. I assure you that DHS does not have 'agents' that investigate people who check out library books.

I thought this was obvious but I didn't say it because I thought it detracted from the humor of the story. Apparently it isn't obvious.

[IP] DHS response to story of UMass senior who requested book

A senior at UMass Dartmouth was visited by federal agents two months ago, after he requested a copy of Mao Tse-Tung's tome on Communism called "The Little Red Book."

The student, who was completing a research paper on Communism for Professor Pontbriand's class on fascism and totalitarianism, filled out a form for the request, leaving his name, address, phone number and Social Security number. He was later visited at his parents' home in New Bedford by two agents of the Department of Homeland Security, the professors said.

The professors said the student was told by the agents that the book is on a "watch list," and that his background, which included significant time abroad, triggered them to investigate the student further.

"I tell my students to go to the direct source, and so he asked for the official Peking version of the book," Professor Pontbriand said. "Apparently, the Department of Homeland Security is monitoring inter-library loans, because that's what triggered the visit, as I understand it."

UMass Dartmouth senior visited by federal agents for checking out Mao's 'Little Red Book'

MemeStreams user Neoteric made Wonkette, or at least his Senate Webcam pointed at the Christmas tree did.

Happy Holidays from Washington DC.

One Tree Hill - Wonkette

flynn23 wrote:
Actually you don't have a right to privacy. There's nothing in the constitution or the bill or rights that grants anything in the way of privacy. So privacy is not a good reason to rub this out.

With respect to the matter of government surveillance there absolutely is a specifically enumerated Constitutional "right to privacy." Its the 4th amendment. Furthermore, the Supreme Court has ruled that an intent to protect a general "right to privacy" is obvious in a reading of the Constitution and the 9th Amendment gives it teeth. I'm quoting here from Griswold vs. Connecticut:

Various guarantees create zones of privacy. The right of association contained in the penumbra of the First Amendment is one, as we have seen. The Third Amendment in its prohibition against the quartering of soldiers "in any house" in time of peace without the consent of the owner is another facet of that privacy. The Fourth Amendment explicitly affirms the "right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures." The Fifth Amendment in its Self-Incrimination Clause enables the citizen to create a zone of privacy which government may not force him to surrender to his detriment. The Ninth Amendment provides: "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."

The Fourth and Fifth Amendments were described in Boyd v. United States, as protection against all governmental invasions "of the sanctity of a man's home and the privacies of life." We recently referred in Mapp v. Ohio, to the Fourth Amendment as creating a "right to privacy, no less important than any other right carefully and particularly reserved to the people."

We have had many controversies over these penumbral rights of "privacy and repose." These cases bear witness that the right of privacy which presses for recognition here is a legitimate one.

RE: Pentagon Expands Domestic Surveillance

Deputy Police Chief Frank Fernandez said officers might, for example, surround a bank building, check the IDs of everyone going in and out and hand out leaflets about terror threats. "This is an in-your-face type of strategy. It's letting the terrorists know we are out there," Fernandez said.

Random ID checks... Odd that they have the ACLU guy giving that a positive quote.

BREITBART.COM - Miami Police Take New Tack Against Terror