Legalizing Torture

Heads up, folks.  (And thanks to randwolf for the heads-up.)

I'll keep this short:  The Republican leadership in Congress is attempting to legalize outsourcing of torture, and hiding it in the bill implementing the 9/11 Commission Report.  The proposed legislation, introduced by House Speaker Dennis Hastert, would free the Secretary of Homeland Security to deport any "terrorist suspect" to any nation in the world and exclude such suspects from the protection of the U.N. Convention Against Torture and Other Forms of Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, which the US signed and ratified.  The burden would be placed upon the person being deported to provide "clear and convincing evidence" that he or she would be tortured, which is obviously next to impossible to do in advance of actually being deported and tortured.  By the time you have "clear and convincing evidence", it's a bit late.

Write to your Representative and let him or her know that you won't stand for this, and that you will vote out of office anyone who votes in favor of legalizing torture.

Federal Judge Strikes Down Section of Patriot Act

"A federal judge struck down an important surveillance provision of the antiterrorism legislation known as the USA Patriot Act yesterday, ruling that it broadly violated the Constitution by giving the federal authorities unchecked powers to obtain private information.

The ruling, by Judge Victor Marrero of Federal District Court in Manhattan, was the first to uphold a challenge to the surveillance sections of the act, which was adopted in October 2001 to expand the powers of the federal government in national security investigations."

This ruling was handed down in an ACLU case challenging "national security letters", a provision which allows the government to subpoena unlimited personal information, without court review, and place a gag order on disclosure of the subpoena.  Judge Marrero ruled that the provision violates the Fourth Amendment.  To give the Bush administration time to respond, the ruling will not take effect for 90 days.

(Sorry, I can't find a registration-free article on this.  I use cypherpunks/cypherpunks; BugMeNot offers spacepastry/cupcake.)

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Update:

eleazar, responding in bullet time, points out this volokh.com article as more informative.  technoshaman offers a Wired.com article; just the fact that Wired are poseurs with delusions of relevance doesn't mean they can't occasionally get something right.