Texas Statute Paves Way for Highway Robbery: Via Blog of Rights: Official Blog of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Last Friday, the ACLU and the ACLU of Texas submitted a brief to the Texas Attorney General’s office arguing that a District Attorney in East Texas should be barred from using money unfairly taken from motorists under Texas’s asset forfeiture law to defend herself from a lawsuit brought by motorists who claim that their property was taken illegally.

The District Attorney, Lynda K. Russell, is accused of participating in a scheme in which police officers routinely pulled over motorists in the vicinity of Tenaha, Texas without cause, asked if they were carrying cash and, if they were, ordered them to sign over the cash to the town or face felony charges of money laundering or other serious crimes. The seizures were purportedly made under Texas’s asset forfeiture law, which enables authorities to seize the profits of crime without a conviction. However, authorities had no evidence that plaintiffs were engaged in any criminal activity. None of the plaintiffs was arrested or ever charged with a crime. [ Read more ... ]

Obama Issues Limits on ‘State Secrets Privilege’: Via Threat Level.

The Obama administration announced new limits Wednesday on the so-called state secrets privilege used by the government to scuttle lawsuits that involve classified information, adding layers of oversight to a power that both the Bush and Obama administration has used to kill off lawsuits challenging anti-terrorism programs.

Under the new guidelines (.pdf) issued by Attorney General Eric Holder, set to take effect October 1, government lawyers will only invoke the privilege when there’s a possibility of “significant harm” to the country, and won’t use it to hide embarrassing or illegal government programs.

The states secrets privilege lets the government tell a judge that a matter in a lawsuit, or the very subject of a lawsuit, is so sensitive that national security trumps justice.  Asserting the privilege all but forces a judge to ban critical evidence or toss an entire case, no matter how egregious the government conduct might have been. [ Read more ... ]

Whose Lawyer? The People’s Lawyer.: Via Blog of Rights: Official Blog of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Today a group of former CIA directors sent a letter to President Obama asking him to kill Attorney General Eric Holder’s investigation into the torture and abuse of detainees in U.S. custody. Clearly these CIA directors have forgotten one key thing: this isn’t the president’s decision to make.

Jameel Jaffer, Director of the ACLU’s National Security Program, said in a statement today: [ Read more ... ]

Senators Press, Mukasey Equivocates - Via ACLU Blog:

On Wednesday, Attorney General Mukasey went before the Senate Judiciary Committee for his first oversight hearing since heading up the Department of Justice. In the days leading up to the hearing, the AG finally responded to the Committee’s request for follow-up regarding his views towards the harsh interrogations that nearly derailed his nomination and for which the CIA has become infamous. [ Read more ... ]

Embattled Attorney General Resigns: WACO, Tex., Aug. 27 — Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, whose tenure has been marred by controversy and accusations of perjury before Congress, has resigned. He is expected to announce the decision to reporters at 10:30 Eastern time this morning in Washington.

Mr. Gonzales, who had rebuffed calls for his resignation for months, submitted his to President Bush by telephone on Friday, a senior administration official said.

Mr. Bush has not yet chosen a replacement but will not leave the position open long, the official said early this morning, speaking on condition of anonymity because the resignation had not yet been made public. [ Read more ... ]

Senator Cites EFF FOIA Work in Call for Investigation of Attorney General: "

EFF's Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) work has helped to prompt the head of the Senate Judiciary Committee to ask for an investigation into whether the attorney general has lied to Congress. [ Read more ... ]

Court's Spy Ruling Makes Defense of Gonzales Perjury Allegations Tricky: "A'letter sent to Senator Arlen Specter on'Tuesday by'Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell'confirms that there are undefined other secret surveillance programs, in addition to the warrrantless wiretapping the Administration has confirmed.'But that letter, which attempts to defend the embattled Attorney General,'gets very close to putting the Administration and the nation's largest'telecoms in serious legal trouble.'

McConnell's confirmation of the existence of other secret surveillance programs came in a letter (.pdf) to Arlen Specter,'seemingly aimed, like the leaks over the weekend to the New York Times, to back'Attorney General Alberto Gonzales's questionable linguistic gymnastics about opposition to the government's secret surveillance activities.' Gonzales' linguistic hair-splitting has prompted members of the Senate Judiciary to call for a Justice Department investigation, while members of the House are pushing for impeachment. [ Read more ... ]

American Citizens Tell the Truth in Court; Why Doesn't Attorney General Gonzales?: "Both Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and THREAT LEVEL faced questioning Tuesday - Gonzales in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee and THREAT LEVEL as part of panel of prospective jurors for a civil case in San Francisco.

In San Francisco, lawyers'probed jurors'about their families,'their perceptions of the'size of jury awards, their ability to award pain and suffering damages, their history with the judicial process, their ability to judge conflicting medical opinions'and any auto accidents they had been in.' The 18 randomly selected men and women, none of whom seemed to want to spend five days'on a jury, answered truthfully and honestly.' None seemed to lie, overly exaggerate or craft legalistic answers to try to dodge jury duty.

The same day, the top law enforcement official in the nation Alberto Gonzales'refused to answer questions from Congress about whether President Bush ordered the Intensive Care Showdown, a refusal that looked like contempt of Congress. [ Read more ... ]

Keep Your Eye on NSL Abuse Ball: "

Earlier this week, we reported that FBI records showed that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales knew about years of chronic National Security Letter problems, even before he testified that 'There has not been one verified case of civil liberties abuse.' This carefully worded government talking point has led to discussions of the definition of 'abuse.'

Standard definitions of abuse include 'improper use,' and the documents themselves admit to at least 'improper' collection of information. None of the definitions require intentional conduct or flagrant problems. [ Read more ... ]

Gonzales Knew About FBI Lawbreaking: "The Gonzo-deathclock resumed ticking last night after the Electronic Frontier Foundation revealed that months before embattled U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales told Congress in 2005 that 'There has not been one verified case of civil liberties abuse' regarding the use of National Security Letters, he had been informed of several civil liberties abuses committed by the FBI using NSLs.

Gonzales and other administration officials went even further, telling Congress that that no abuses of the USA Patriot Act had ever occurred. This, too, documents obtained by the EFF through FOIA prove, was untrue. (to see the full documents, go here.) Unauthorized surveillance, illegal searches, wiretapping the wrong people, collecting data the feds never asked for -- Gonzales had been told about it all. Yet in testimony designed to persuade Congress to re-authorize the Patriot Act, Gonzales described a smoothly running counter-terror machine that had exercised exquisite care not to infringe upon citizens' rights. [ Read more ... ]

Omaha.com Metro/Region Section: "LINCOLN - Laws allowing the Nebraska State Patrol to gather information on people without a court order give that agency a troubling amount of power, some legal and communication experts say.

The laws came to light in a state attorney general's opinion issued this week.

In that opinion, Attorney General Jon Bruning affirmed the patrol's use of what are called administrative subpoenas to gather customer information from Internet providers, telephone companies and similar businesses. [ Read more ... ]

House Judiciary Members Demand Answers About NSA Spying: "

Four senators pressed Attorney General Alberto Gonzales this week to come clean about the relationship between the NSA spying program and former Deputy Attorney General James Comey's dramatic testimony about a controversial classified program. The Department of Justice declined to change its previous testimony, but Congress isn't backing off.

Now House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers and Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Subcommittee Chairman Jerrold Nadler have written to Gonzales demanding more information about the still-shadowy NSA program. Along with asking for information related to Comey's testimony, they stated: [ Read more ... ]

Gonzales Hospital Episode Detailed - washingtonpost.com: "On the night of March 10, 2004, as Attorney General John D. Ashcroft lay ill in an intensive-care unit, his deputy, James B. Comey, received an urgent call.

White House Counsel Alberto R. Gonzales and President Bush's chief of staff, Andrew H. Card Jr., were on their way to the hospital to persuade Ashcroft to reauthorize Bush's domestic surveillance program, which the Justice Department had just determined was illegal. [ Read more ... ]