Home » News & Events » E-mail Alerts Archive » Civil Liberties News
Wednesday, June 14
CONTENTS
1. For the GOP, a Base Hit Isn't Enough
2. Advisers get tips on protecting college press liberty
3. Roots of US war prisoners' rights run deep
4. The tipping point in Bush's presidency
5. Buckeye proof: A new poll tax
6. Reality of Death Row
1. For the GOP, a Base Hit Isn't Enough
By Sarah Chamberlain Resnick
The Washington Post
Wednesday, June 14, 2006
The inside-the-Beltway crowd has been chattering about the need for Republicans to reconnect with the "conservative base." Columnists, talking heads and other so-called experts have been going on at length about the need for the GOP to motivate this base to save our congressional majorities in the fall. While this may make for interesting banter on the Sunday morning talk shows, the reality is that Republican majorities in the House and Senate do not rest on the base alone. While keeping that segment of the party motivated is certainly an important factor in the November midterms, it isn't enough. To maintain our majorities, particularly in the House, our party must reach out to independent and swing voters.
A recent Cook Political Report/RT Strategies poll gave Democrats an 11-point generic ballot advantage on the question, "Which party would you like to see in control of Congress?" Not surprisingly, by a margin of 87 percent to 8, self-identified Republicans say they prefer Republican control. By similar margins, self-identified Democrats prefer Democratic control. The 11-point advantage for Democrats is due not to an unmotivated base but to a dramatic shift among independents against Republican control of Congress. By a greater than 2-to-1 margin (46 percent to 21 percent), independents say they prefer Democratic control of the House.
Against this backdrop, it's not surprising that Democrats are pinning their hopes of retaking the House on what has been dubbed the Northeast Strategy, which targets Republican incumbents in such blue states as New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Connecticut and New Hampshire. According to the New York Times, independent analysts say at least a dozen races in these states will be competitive. And Republican incumbents in closely divided or blue-leaning, Northeastern districts rely heavily on independent voters to provide the margin of victory on Election Day.
In what may be the cruelest of ironies, if Republicans are punished by independent voters in the midterms, it will be the centrist, independent Republicans from the Northeast who will be the most likely victims. For Democratic strategists and left-wing interest groups hoping for a Speaker Pelosi, a Republican legislative agenda that plays only to the conservative base this year is a dream come true.
For Republicans to hold the House, we must win back disaffected independent swing voters. To do this, Republicans in the House must pursue a legislative agenda that reflects the values and priorities of average Americans. In the poll cited above, independents list their top five concerns as jobs and the economy, Iraq, health care, gasoline prices, and education. Independent swing voters want more than just empty rhetoric and divisive wedge politics -- they want results.
Centrist Republicans in the House are showing leadership on the issues independent voters care about. Nancy Johnson of Connecticut and Fred Upton of Michigan have spearheaded the effort to protect critical investments in education and health-care programs during this year's budget process. Efforts to curb skyrocketing gas prices through tough new legislation on price gouging have been championed by Heather Wilson of New Mexico. Mike Castle of Delaware and Jim Gerlach of Pennsylvania have led the way on ethics reform designed to restore and protect the integrity of the legislative process. On issue after issue, centrist Republicans in the House are fighting for an agenda that offers common-sense solutions to the problems facing our nation. Republican leadership in Washington should support and encourage these centrist efforts to reach out to independent swing voters.
In 1994 a Republican tidal wave brought our party into control in the House and Senate. Success at the polls that year didn't rely solely on a motivated conservative base. From 1992 to 1994 the Republican percentage among independents had grown by 10 points -- from 46 percent to 56. The Republican Revolution was a two-pronged effort relying on both a motivated conservative base and efforts to reach out to independent swing voters. To maintain that majority in 2006, we'd do well to remember the lessons of 1994.
The writer is executive director of the Republican Main Street Partnership, an organization of moderate Republicans that includes a number of members of Congress and other officials.
Click here to view story.
2. Advisers get tips on protecting college press liberty
By Beth Chesterman
First Amendment Center
Wednesday, June 14, 2006
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Keeping up with current First Amendment issues is essential for those advising college media — especially in light of recent court decisions.
The Supreme Court’s refusal earlier this year not to consider a lower court’s ruling in the case of Hosty v. Carter could have a major effect on college media, Student Press Law Center Executive Director Mark Goodman told 16 participants at the 2006 College Media Advisers First Amendment Institute.
“I believe [the decision] opens the door to an incredible amount of censorship in college publications,” Goodman said.
College press advisers from across the country gathered to listen to Goodman and other presenters at the annual conference co-sponsored by the College Media Advisers and the First Amendment Center, which hosted the event June 6-8.
Goodman told the advisers that the Supreme Court’s decision not to consider Hosty meant the June 2005 ruling by the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals stands. In Hosty, the 7th Circuit held that the Supreme Court’s 1988 Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier decision, which dealt with high school newspapers, also applied to subsidized student publications at public colleges and universities.
In Hazelwood, the Court ruled that school administrators may censor student publications only if the publication is not designated as a “public forum” where students have the authority to make content decisions. Because Hosty expands Hazelwood to public colleges and universities, Goodman said, the decision could give administrators an opportunity to censor student publications in the 7th Circuit’s jurisdiction, which includes Indiana, Illinois and Wisconsin.
Goodman urged college media advisers from those states to get a written policy signed by their school’s administration that designates student news organizations as “public forums” and declares that students have the authority to make content decisions without receiving advance approval.
A written policy “is the strongest legal protection,” Goodman said. “Now is the time for administrators to be embarrassed by their lack of commitment to student press freedom.”
Although Hosty does not affect other states, Goodman suggested that college media advisers from all over the country should ask their school administrations to sign a statement affirming the editorial independence of their student media.
Goodman said getting a policy implemented on campus could also help teach students about free expression. Focusing on college press freedom helps students “intellectually think through the First Amendment and why it is their right,” he said.
In addition to Goodman’s presentation, the conference featured discussion topics ranging from the historical background of the First Amendment to how increasing newsroom diversity can strengthen First Amendment expression on campuses.
Robbie Morganfield, executive director of the Freedom Forum’s Diversity Institute, told the advisers that college media was not the diverse melting pot it should be. A journalist’s background contributes to how he or she frames an image or tells a story, he said, and that in college media the lack of diversity in the newsroom often leads to the same images and stories being repeated.
“We miss the opportunities that universal stories present,” Morganfield said. “We need to start getting younger people thinking beyond their own experiences.”
Morganfield suggested that one way of increasing the diversity in student media would be to include business-management training in the curriculum. Such training could lead to students' gaining better people skills, he said, which in turn would lead to a higher awareness of the need for diversity and improve the quality of newspapers.
“We should help younger people understand the role the media plays in the process of affecting and changing the world,” Morganfield said.
Conference participants also exchanged ideas on how to promote the First Amendment on their campuses while also getting students involved in the process.
“Universities ought to be a place where the freest thinking goes on in society,” First Amendment Center Executive Director Gene Policinski told the advisers. “Our goal is for you to effectively advocate for the First Amendment on your campus.”
In addition, the First Amendment Institute gave each adviser a toolkit of suggestions and tips on how to implement a First Amendment event at their college or university.
“I hope you will take what you learned here and insert yourselves on the issues on your campus,” Policinski said. “It is an opportunity college media advisers are able to fill.”
Beth Chesterman is a third-year law student at the University of Iowa College of Law in Iowa City.
Click here to view story.
3. Roots of US war prisoners' rights run deep
The lack of human decency at Guantánamo Bay undermines a legacy of just treatment.
By James Norton
The Christian Science Monitor
Wednesday, June 14, 2006
At Guantánamo Bay this past weekend, three internees - or prisoners, or detainees, or whatever you want to call human beings jailed indefinitely without conviction and with no hope of legal recourse - committed suicide.
Navy Rear-Admiral Harry Harris, the base commander, described the suicides as "not an act of desperation but an act of asymmetric warfare against us."
Details on what led these men to commit their act of war are a little hard to come by thanks to the extraordinarily un-American veil of secrecy that surrounds the camp. But despite that effort, information about Gitmo has trickled out slowly - from sources in the FBI and CIA, from the International Committee of the Red Cross, from a released British prisoner, and from investigative journalists such as The New Yorker's Seymour Hersh.
The American Civil Liberties Union has compiled thousands of documents relating to torture of prisoners in US custody, including FBI memos complaining about military abuses at Guantánamo Bay. Details include prisoners being left in straitjackets in intense sunlight with hoods over their heads, and "military guards ... slapping prisoners, stripping them, pouring cold water over them and making them stand until they got hypothermia."
At its root, the very idea of Guantánamo Bay runs headfirst into what it means to be an American.
The US has (or had) a worldwide reputation for promoting human rights. That reputation was earned by its struggle - often against itself, as was the case during the fight against slavery, and the civil rights movement - to protect individuals against systems that would otherwise mistreat them.
The roots of that reputation run deep, reaching back to the Enlightenment ideals that gave birth to the essential protections of the Constitution. But a lot of countries merely talked the talk at the time of their birth - there's a mile-wide gap between the high-flying rhetoric of the French Revolution and the blood bath that followed.
But George Washington and his compatriots took their founding principles quite seriously. On Aug. 11, 1775, Washington sent a blistering letter to a British counterpart, Thomas Gage. He complained about gravely wounded and untreated American soldiers being thrown into a jail with common criminals.
Eight days later, despite threatening to treat British soldiers with equal cruelty, Washington admitted that he could not and would not retaliate in kind, writing: "Not only your Officers, and Soldiers have been treated with a Tenderness due to Fellow Citizens, & Brethren; but even those execrable Parricides [traitors] whose Counsels & Aid have deluged their Country with Blood, have been protected from the Fury of a justly enraged People."
Imagine that; a government on the run fighting a desperate war against a hated enemy and treating captured prisoners with compassion and decency. No doubt many of the captured British troops had intelligence that might have been useful to the Revolutionary cause - still, decent treatment was the norm. In the current war on terror, that would be described as being "soft."
Alexander Hamilton, while commanding soldiers against the British, prevented what could have been a massacre. After the siege of Yorktown, one of Hamilton's captains, eager for revenge against the British, was about to run a prisoner through with his bayonet.
Hamilton stepped in personally to stop the man, and later reported proudly: "Incapable of imitating examples of barbarity and forgetting recent provocations, the soldiers spared every man who ceased to resist."
The Founding Fathers didn't treat prisoners decently solely because they were decent people. Although their writings and ideals reveal a constant and passionate interest in essential human rights, it's important to remember that they were also pragmatists. They understood that the Revolutionary cause had to take and hold the moral high ground in order to rally popular support and exhaust the British giant. And they knew that their necks were very literally on the line were they to be captured by the British. Mistreatment of British soldiers would come back on their heads a thousandfold.
Times have changed, of course, and now it's the US that holds the upper hand from a military perspective. There is no longer any fear among US leaders that they personally will suffer the effects of cruel treatment of prisoners, and so they feel far more comfortable ordering the sort of "extraordinary" measures of interrogation and detainment that led to the Gitmo suicides.
What they overlook, of course, is that the moral high ground is still there to be taken - or lost. And as long as "Abu Ghraib" and "Guantánamo Bay" remain in the international lexicon, tyrants around the world can laugh off criticism of their actions coming from American leaders - after all, America understands that desperate times call for inhumane measures, right?
It can be argued, of course, that captured British soldiers are hardly equivalent to the type of men held at Guantánamo Bay. The soldiers fought in uniform; the detainees at Gitmo were terrorists, working undercover. Washington would have had them hanged. True enough - except that we don't actually know how many of them were terrorists working undercover. Most were detained on evidence too flimsy to hold up under trial, according to declassified documents from the Department of Defense and reporting in the staunchly nonpartisan National Journal. The evidence suggests that many - perhaps most - of the detainees are guilty of nothing more than being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
You don't have to be a historian or political scientist to realize that it's high time the US government took a step back toward its founding principles and shut down Guantánamo Bay. Accountability for those who loosened the restraints of human decency, and a bit of reparations for everyone unjustly imprisoned also might be the civilized thing to do. In fact, it would be downright American.
James Norton is a former Middle East editor of The Christian Science Monitor and the author of "Saving General Washington: The Right Wing Assault on America's Founding Principles."
Click here to view story.
4. The tipping point in Bush's presidency
The US will most remember Bush for how he shapes the outcome of the Iraq war.
By John Hughes
The Christian Science Monitor
Wednesday, June 14, 2006
As President Bush gathered his advisers at Camp David this week for a brainstorming session on Iraq, his eye had to be on the forthcoming midterm elections and beyond to the presidential elections of 2008.
Ordinarily it is the state of the economy and not a foreign affairs issue that primarily determines the way Americans vote in their national elections. But these are not ordinary times. The US is engaged in a war on terrorism. Many thousands of its soldiers are at risk in Iraq.
The level of stability in Iraq, the extent of US casualties, and uncertainty about the length of US commitment will play a significant role in upcoming elections.
While the Camp David talks did deal with Iraq - nudging of Iraqi leaders included - the president also was making decisions affecting the rest of his presidency. As Iraq goes, so likely goes his presidential legacy.
While the initial military conduct of the war in Iraq was brilliant as American and British forces quickly overran an inferior Iraqi Army, the postwar phase was ill prepared and inept in aspects of its execution.
On the positive side, Saddam Hussein has been deposed and will face justice for his multitude of crimes. Millions of Iraqis have voted in free elections, a Constitution has been written, and a government installed.
Last week Al Qaeda's leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, was found and killed. That is a victory for the quality of US intelligence in Iraq and should surely be a blow to the morale of his followers. But just how his departure will affect the level of terrorist activity remains to be seen.
On the negative side, the formation of the government was tediously long, reflecting the deep and continuing suspicions among the Kurds, Sunnis, and Shiites. Despite much unheralded progress in the reconstruction of Iraq's physical infrastructure, many Iraqis remain without reliable electricity, water, and other services. Security is often nonexistent. The country is awash with weapons in the hands of the US military, Iraqi government police and troops, private militias, political factions, and of course terrorists of various nationalities with differing agendas. All this leads some Iraqis to declare that although they are glad to be liberated, day-to-day life now is worse than it was under Mr. Hussein.
As insurgent violence and political wrangling have dragged on, President Bush's ratings at home have fallen. Though the polls show a majority of Americans supported the decision to intervene in Iraq, impatience with the aftermath has escalated. Henceforth, Bush doesn't have a blank check from the American people.
The president has many items on his worry list. Abroad there are the nuclear weapons ambitions of Iran and North Korea, the anti-American bellicosity of Hugo Chávez in oil-rich Venezuela and the leftward drift in Latin America, and the US relationship with China and with Russia. Some of Bush's tough language on these issues has been toned down as he has given Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice authority to try some new diplomatic efforts.
At home he is championing changes in immigration and Social Security, two controversial issues that must be tackled although neither offer him much political gain. He has embarked on a charm offensive with individual members of Congress who must be effectively wooed if his plans for reform are to succeed.
But all the problems, foreign and domestic, fade into the background so long as Iraq remains the principal challenge that it is.
The ideal is that the new Iraqi government should take hold, put down terrorism, stabilize the economy, and permit the beginning of an American troop withdrawal. Should Iraq be able to do this on a reasonable timetable, it could have a significant impact on other lands in the Islamic world.
Thus, stability in Iraq triggering movement toward some kind of democracy in the Middle East would be the achievement for which the Bush presidency would best be remembered.
No wonder that Bush and his advisers have been consumed this week with concern for the outcome in Iraq. It is the tipping point of his presidency.
John Hughes, a former editor of the Monitor, is editor and chief operating officer of the Deseret Morning News.
Click here to view story.
5. Buckeye proof: A new poll tax
By Marie Cocco
Daytona Beach News Journal
Wednesday, June 14, 2006
If Ohio in 2004 was the new Florida of 2000, then what to call the Buckeye State as the pivotal congressional election of 2006 approaches?
Worse. Much worse.
Case in point: A new state law that could keep naturalized U.S. citizens from voting on Election Day, even if they've been citizens for decades. In an election year in which immigration is a blazing political issue, you might say Ohio Republicans are trailblazers.
Faced with national criticism and even some judicial condemnation for voting practices and partisan interpretations of its voting laws that routinely favored George W. Bush in the 2004 presidential election, Ohio's Republican-controlled Legislature took action. It rewrote its election law in a way that, among other things, set up barriers that could keep naturalized U.S. citizens from having their votes count.
The little-noticed provision of Ohio's new election law was tucked into a section of the legislation that changed the terms for challenging voters at the polls. In 2004, Republicans sent thousands of "challengers" to polling places, concentrating them in urban precincts and those with heavy minority populations. The contentiousness of the challenger effort led the Legislature to narrow the number of people who can confront a voter at the polls and challenge his or her right to cast a ballot. The new law gives this authority only to poll workers -- that is, partisan representatives of the Republican and Democratic parties.
But this fix became a handy excuse for more shenanigans: Lawmakers took the opportunity to make it potentially harder for naturalized citizens to vote. Now, if a voter is challenged at the polls on the suspicion that he is not an American citizen, a native-born citizen can merely state that he was born, say, in Toledo, and then is free to cast a ballot.
But if challenged, a naturalized citizen must produce a certificate of naturalization. If the voter doesn't have this document, he or she may cast a provisional ballot to be either counted or discarded as invalid after Election Day. "They are required to take your word for it if you are a native-born citizen," says Daniel Tokaji, an election-law expert at Ohio State University's Moritz College of Law. "If you are a naturalized citizen, then you have to jump through this hoop."
It's an expensive hoop. Replacing a naturalization certificate costs $220 -- a poll tax for our times. And it must be obtained through the immigration division of the Department of Homeland Security, not known for its bureaucratic efficiency. A voter has only 10 days after the election to provide documents necessary to have a provisional ballot accepted and counted.
It sure seems unlikely that all of Ohio's estimated 187,556 naturalized citizens will be challenged at the polls. Really, does anyone believe that Polish grandmothers will bear the brunt of this law? "Latino and Asian citizens are the ones who are going to get challenged on this," Tokaji says. "It's a good bet."
Indeed, the law's chief sponsor, state Rep. Kevin DeWine, concurs that non-white citizens with foreign accents are more likely to face a challenge. "I don't disagree," he said, but hopes precinct workers will be fair.
The nation has an odious history of using burdensome identification requirements to keep minority voters from casting ballots. If Ohio wanted to treat all U.S. citizens equally, as the Constitution requires, it wouldn't set up a separate and unequal system that requires only naturalized citizens to prove themselves.
Instead the new state law creates a special class of sub-citizens. They can be intimidated at the polling place and forced to vote only by provisional ballot -- with that ballot then subject to the wacky, partisan maneuvering that usually determines which provisional ballots get counted and which are cast aside.
Cocco is a columnist for The Washington Post Writer's Group.
Click here to view story.
6. Reality of Death Row
Palm Beach Post editorial
Wednesday, June 14, 2006
In Florida, the method of execution is the least of the problems with the death penalty.
After Monday, though, it's the most pressing. Ruling in a Florida case, the Supreme Court decided unanimously that Death Row inmates can challenge their sentence by claiming that lethal injection violates the Eighth Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment. Technically, the case of cop-killer Clarence Edward Hill was about whether he even could file what amounted to a new appeal. Practically, it was about how this state carries out the death penalty.
Those on both sides of the death-penalty debate will note the irony of a man who shot down a police officer complaining that he might feel pain while being put to death. But is that any odder than a state contending, as some have, that a mentally ill person can be given sufficient drugs to make him competent enough for the state to kill him?
Florida has been here before. In March 1997, when the state still used electrocution, flames shot from the side of Pedro Medina's head. That malfunction halted executions for about a year, and in January 2000, Florida changed from electrocution to lethal injection. Terry Sims, the first person to die by the needle, also had challenged the state's new method. The Florida Supreme Court rejected his appeal.
Gov. Bush claimed, correctly, that the ruling in the Hill case doesn't invalidate the system of lethal injection in Florida. But the ruling does further invalidate the system of capital punishment in Florida.
This state leads the nation in the number of releases from Death Row. That's the biggest problem with the system, and the best reason to abolish it, especially since Florida allows life without parole. The second-best reason is that no state can design a fair system for determining capital punishment. Some Death Row inmates are like Danny Rolling, who killed five college students in 1990. For others, juries that had to vote 12-0 to convict voted 7-5 or 8-4 to recommend death, a practice the Supreme Court has questioned. Florida also has left itself vulnerable by cutting money for Death Row lawyers.
It adds up to this reality: Florida never will execute all 371 people on Death Row. The state has executed 60 people since resuming capital punishment in 1979. Just 10 have been put to death since 2000. Capital punishment zealots will argue that the answer is to shorten appeals. But the 10-year limit Gov. Bush tried to enact would have caused the state to kill innocent men.
Capital punishment is an expensive, time-consuming political deception. That's a problem.
Click here to view story.
In accordance with Title 17 USC Section 107, these newspaper articles are distributed, without profit, to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. The ACLU of Florida has no affiliation whatsoever with the publishers of these articles nor is the ACLU of Florida endorsed or sponsored by the publishers.
"Click here to view story" links are provided as a convenience to our readers and allow for verification of authenticity. However, as articles are often updated, the final version published at the originating site may not always match our emailed or archive version.
Larry Helm Spalding
ACLU Legislative Counsel
Tallahassee, Florida
"Never doubt that a small group of committed citizens can change the world.
In fact, it is the only thing that ever has."
- Margaret Mead
